Carden, Ronald M.

Dr. Ron Carden has taught American History at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, since 1969. He attended Texas Technological College, New Mexico State University, and the University of New Mexico. Dr. Carden’s chief research interests have been Episcopal Church history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

William Montgomery Brown (1855-1937)

2007 0-7734-5471-3
This study focuses on the background, life and personality of Episcopal Bishop William Montgomery Brown to explain why he became a materialist and a communist. Born to poor but industrious parents near Orrville, Ohio in 1855, he pursued the ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. Following the publication of his The Church for Americans in 1895, he was chosen as the episcopal successor to the Rt. Rev. Henry Niles Pierce, Bishop of Arkansas. He went on to write some works which proved controversial, causing friction within and outside of his diocese, leading him to move back to his native Ohio where, following a crisis of faith, he became a materialist and communist. Then, following the publication of his Communism and Christianism: Banish Gods from Skies and Capitalists from Earth!, he was tried for heresy and deposed in 1925. He spent the remaining years of his life advancing communism and advocating a symbolic, non-supernatural Christianity, up until his death in 1937.