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William Montgomery Brown (1855-1937): The Southern Episcopal Bishop Who Became a Communist. By Ronald M. Carden. Preface by John B. Boles. (Lewiston, N.Y., and other cities: Edwin Mellen Press, c. 2007. Pp. [xii], 268. $109.95, ISBN 978-0-7734-5471-2.)
After an up-by-the-bootstraps childhood in Wayne County, Ohio, William Montgomery Brown found a patron in Mary Scranton Bradford, a wealthy Cleveland widow, who paid for his training in the Episcopal Church and, after he married her daughter, provided the financial support that gave him the time to write books and the security to make them controversial.
Communism was only one of his causes. His early work in the 1890s defended the teachings of the Protestant Episcopal Church and argued that all Protestants should unite within that denomination, an idea popular enough with Episcopalians...