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Book Reviews / Pneuma 32 (2010) 431-473
Catherine L. Albanese, A Republic of Mind & Spirit: A Cultural History of American Meta- physical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). xi + 628 pp., $42.00 cloth; $22.50 paper.
When I shelved Catherine L. Albanese’s A Republic of Mind & Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion on my bookcase devoted to American religious history, I noticed something peculiar: the book is nearly the same size and shape as the magnum opus of the late dean of American religious history Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People. Of course, since Yale University Press published both books, this may be pure coincidence. However, such a coincidence is apropos. What Ahlstrom did in establishing the narrative of Puritanism as the heart of American religious history, Alba- nese has done for metaphysical religion. Her own magnum opus persuasively argues that an American metaphysical religious tradition has operated — and continues to operate — at the heart of American religion.
Albanese argues that this “American metaphysical religion” functions and develops alongside other American religious currents, namely the evangelical (emotive/heart-based) and liturgical (communal/ritual-based) forms of religiosity. Te author characterizes meta- physics as emphasizing the experience of mind, and an organic link between the mind, the material universe, and the spiritual universe. Unlike the occult, the American metaphysi- cal tradition operates as an exoteric, practical, religious tradition in the American religious scene. It is characterized by themes such as the power of the mind, correspondence between inner and outer realities, and the energetic nature of the world. Albanese argues for a “shaping role of what [she] call[s] metaphysics or metaphysical religion” in American culture, and specifically that the American metaphysical religion has served as a “major player in the evolution of the national religiosity” (p. 4, italics in the original). Despite this, historians have slighted metaphysical religion because it has generally failed to denominationalize, and thus exists at the borders of respectability. Te author understands her project as bringing this overlooked American tradition out of the shadows of histori- ography and into the central narratives of American religious history.
Tis encyclopedic text chronicles the American metaphysical religion from its pre-colo- nial foundations to the present-day New Age. Albanese begins her examination in the Hermetic and metaphysical practices of Continental Europe and the English Radical Ref- ormation, emphasizing both elite and vernacular forms of such practices as astrology, sooth-saying, and folk-healing. Having shifted to the colonial and early Republican con- texts, she further elucidates the healing practices and occult arts of a variety of newcomers (Puritans, Quakers, German pietists, Virginian Anglicans, and enslaved Africans) as well as the Native American inhabitants of the Eastern seaboard. She argues for a “trail of ver- nacular meetings and exchanges that are at least suggestive of a spiritual future” (111).
Yet it is the nineteenth century “spiritual hothouse,” as Jon Butler has called it (Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People [Harvard University Press, 1990]), and the early twentieth century, that merits most of Albanese’s attention. Te text weaves together a history of Masons, Mormons, Universalists, Unitarians, Transcendentalists, Spiritualists, Mesmerists, Teosophists, Swedenborgians, Utopianists, Christian Scientists, and New Tought advocates. Each such group developed traditions that encompassed
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157007410X534166
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 32 (2010) 431-473
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themes of moralism, social vision, Romanticist notions of the heart and inner truth, and “village Enlightenment” principles of rationalism, exoteric knowledge, and democratiza- tion. Albanese notes a variety of syncretistic efforts within and among these groups, what she calls “combinativeness,” which she identifies as one of the hallmarks of American metaphysical religion. Readers familiar with Albanese’s textbook, America: Religions and Religion (Tomson Wadsworth, 2007; 4th ed.), will recognize a similar theme.
Given the topic of A Republic of Mind & Spirit , Pentecostalism enters Albanese’s narra- tive only seldom, most notably in her treatment of the social location of late twentieth- century African American and Latino proponents of metaphysics. Despite this, scholars of Pentecostal Theology will especially value several themes that Albanese highlights through- out the text. First, Albanese places healing at the center of American metaphysical religion. From colonial “cunning people” to Native American herbalists to Christian Scientists to advocates of alternative medical systems to today’s New Age practitioners, Albanese argues that a pragmatic concern with healing has occupied a central place in the thought and practice of American metaphysical religion. In this regard, one finds parallels to defining characteristics of Pentecostal experience — both its pragmatism and its emphasis on heal- ing, as Grant Wacker has suggested in Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Cul- ture (Harvard University Press, 2001) — as well as an argument for a historical continuity of concerns about healing in American religious culture.
More broadly, Albanese chronicles a juxtaposition of the pragmatic and the theological in the American metaphysical religion. While American metaphysicians engaged in extensive theological inquiry, they focused on matters of pragmatic concern. In addition to that of healing, American metaphysical religion has focused on issues of psychological well-being, prosperity, wisdom, and happiness. Tough Albanese does not mention the Pentecostal or Holiness traditions with regard to most of these matters, her attention to the rise of the Pros- perity Gospel and the role that the American metaphysical religion has played in its formula- tion will surely inform scholars interested in contemporary Pentecostal developments.
Finally, Albanese’s text is a fine testament to the variety of religious currents at work in American culture. Many past treatments of American religious tradition, including Ahl- strom’s A Religious History of the American People, have focused on the diffusion of elite Northeastern religious traditions throughout culture. Even more recent scholarship, such Nathan Hatch’s Te Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989), has followed in the tradition of the grand narrative, substituting an evangelical tra- dition for Ahlstrom’s Puritan one. Albanese’s A Republic of Mind & Spirit indicates how multiple major traditions can exist and interrelate in American religious history, opening the door to more nuanced scholarly treatments that forefront the popular, vernacular, everyday religious experience of Americans.
A Republic of Mind & Spirit is impeccably researched, drawing on a plethora of primary and secondary source materials. Tough long (over five hundred pages of text), the book is quite readable and accessible, though its length might make the book untenable for the undergraduate classroom.
Reviewed by Benjamin E. Zeller
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Brevard College, Brevard, North Carolina, USA
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