ENGLISH

The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination

Book information

Year
2010
ISBN
0226042804, 9780226042800, 0226042790, 9780226042794
LCC
BL53 .B397 2010
Open Library ID
OL23668595M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1495706 bytes)
Pages
272\266
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

American spirituality—with its focus on individual meaning, experience, and exploration—is usually thought to be a product of the postmodern era. But, as The New Metaphysicals makes clear, contemporary American spirituality has historic roots in the nineteenth century and a great deal in common with traditional religious movements. To explore this world, Courtney Bender combines research into the history of the movement with fieldwork in Cambridge, Massachusetts—a key site of alternative religious inquiry from Emerson and William James to today. Through her ethnographic analysis, Bender discovers that a focus on the new, on progress, and on the way spiritual beliefs intersect with science obscures the historical roots of spirituality from its practitioners and those who study it alike—and shape an enduring set of modern religious possibilities in the process.

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