John Henry Newman and Orestes A. Brownson as Educational Philosophers

Abstract

Orestes Brownson (1803–1876), preacher, journalist, editor, philosopher and controversialist, was born in Stockbridge, Vt., 16 September 1803. At the age of nineteen he became a Presbyterian, but two years later a Universalist. He married in 1827. From 1826 to 1831 Brownson preached in New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. He became a Unitarian, and was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1834. In 1836 he organized ‘The society for Christian Union and Progress’ and began to preach the ‘Church of the Future’. In the same year he became acquainted with Emerson, Alcott, Ripley and others who were labelled Transcendentalists. The latter were the dominant intellectual figures in American life until the middle of the century.