“I am not my own director”: Catholic Slavery and Protestant Freedom in George Bourne’s Lorette

Abstract

George Bourne (1780-1845) was not only the pioneer of immediate emancipation in the United States but also the first to inaugurate the ex-nun genre in American literature. A devout Protestant, Bourne argued that false religion – exemplified by Catholics and slaveholding Protestants – led inevitably to the enslavement of both body and soul. He consistently balanced his time in combating both southern slavery and Roman Catholicism, the two predominant enemies of political freedom and pure Christianity. The few historians who have examined Lorette, Bourne’s only novel, have narrowly emphasized its relevance to antebel-lum politics. While not shying away from such developments, Bourne’s central objective in revealing the false religion of Catholicism (as with slavery) was to present a picture of true Bible-centered Protestantism. For Bourne, physical and spiritual enslavement rested on bad theology. This essay offers a detailed discussion of Lorette as an evangelical theo-logical drama, articulating a concept of freedom as a product of biblical faith.