| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Margaret C. DePalma. Dialogue on the Frontier: Catholic and Protestant Relations, 1793–1883. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 2004. Pp. xvi, 220. $55.00.
In many respects, the history of American religion is defined by controversy, both within denominations and between them. It is hardly a wonder that the conflictual aspect of American religion has been a major focus of historical investigation.	1
Given the prevailing direction of the scholarship, this book is a welcome addition to the literature on frontier religion. In it, Margaret C. DePalma, without denying the occurrence of anti-Catholicism west of the Appalachian Mountains, convincingly asserts that relationships between Protestants and Catholics were more fluid than in the east, and that, at least in Kentucky and Ohio, "members of both religions were carrying on a dialogue of mutual necessity that allowed them to build a region and a nation" (p. xi). By examining the careers of Father Stephen Theodore Badin, Bishop Edward Dominic Fenwick, and Archbishop John Baptist Purcell, she demonstrates that relations between Protestants and Catholics were far more nuanced than is frequently supposed.	2
DePalma's introductory chapters provide little new information, yet are useful in establishing the wider American context within which her study is situated. John Carroll, America's first Catholic bishop, struggled with Protestant antagonism, as well as internal issues such as clergy quality and the tendency of lay church trustees to view themselves as ultimate parochial authorities. Attempts to exercise episcopal control over such matters contributed to Protestant perceptions that Roman Catholicism was despotic and unsuited to American republican culture.	. . .

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