A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion.

Fuller, Robert C.

A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. By Catherine L. Albanese. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. xii + 628 pp. $40.00 cloth.

With this stunning historical narrative, Catherine Albanese assumes the mantle of our era's most gifted interpreter of the American religious experience. Much like earlier guides to our nation's religious landscape such as Sydney Ahlstrom, Martin Marty, and William McLoughlin, Albanese is a master of historical synthesis. Such synthesis does not proceed from breadth of information alone. Instead, it stems from a fundamental vision of the historical flow carried forward through distinct actors or episodes. What distinguishes Albanese's vision is the clarity with which she identifies the three principal forms through which this flow perdures. The first, and easiest to identify, is the liturgical form of religious piety as it has been shaped through denominationally organized ceremonies. A second, or evangelical, form of American religiosity has been cultivated through sudden, life-transforming experiences. Yet different from the denominational or evangelical forms of American religious life has been the continuing presence of what Albanese keenly identifies as a metaphysical form consisting of preoccupation with "what lies beyond the physical plane."

Knowing that this third form of American religiosity has received the least attention from her academic peers, Albanese assumed the task "of providing a historical account of the groups of people who speak, in the United States, the religious language called metaphysics and who order their lives in terms of it"(9). The product is brilliant--owing both to Albanese's scholarly erudition and to the metaphysical tradition's own ceaseless creativity.

The story of American metaphysical religion begins in numerous places and times. Native Americans and a slave population hailing from West Africa and the Caribbean infused American religion with notions of more-than-physical sources of wisdom and power. Yet, more influential in the long run were various strands of European esotericism stemming from such varied sources as Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, the Kabbalah, and Rosicrucianism. Colonial settlers brought extensive libraries of such esoteric lore, along with a vast array of magical and divination practices aimed at forging connection with spiritual powers outside the scope of biblical religion. Masonry diffused certain segments of this tradition as, in their own ways, did the Shakers, the Universalists, and Joseph Smith.

The flow of metaphysical language into the American religious vernacular was greatly accelerated by the mystical outpourings of Emerson and the Transcendentalists. And, on the heels of Transcendentalism's infusion of metaphysical categories into Americans' self-understanding, spiritualism further popularized "a quasi-Quaker theology of inner light, inner truth, and outer action to reform society according to spirit principles of grand connection" (181). These "spirit principles of grand connection" appealed to middleclass Americans torn between their competing allegiances to religious and scientific understandings. Late-nineteenth-century metaphysical religion offered, in the words of one enthusiast, "a religion, separate in all respects from any existing sect, because it bases its affirmations purely upon the demonstration of fact, science, and natural law, and admits of no creed or denominational boundary" (220). And thus it was that metaphysical religion, especially as espoused by New Thought, entered into the stock of conceptions with which millions of Americans took their bearings on life, supplementing or complementing the liturgical and evangelical forms of personal piety among those who needed to finesse their way to spirituality in a scientific age.

Albanese's most important contribution to American religious historiography comes in her chapter examining how "Metaphysical Asia" became so central to modern American spirituality. At long last a prominent religious historian identifies how the admittedly offbeat Theosophists played a crucial role in preparing American audiences for mystical wisdom from the East. Theosophy shifted nineteenth-century metaphysical language "into new and more expansive vocabularies and grammars" capable of illuminating spiritual paths for those who might otherwise lead very secular lives. Theosophy's language of chakras, subtle energies, and mystical meditation encouraged Americans--both within the academy and without--to filter Asian religions through the categories that Transcendentalism, spiritualism, mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, and New Thought had already made familiar.

One of Albanese's major goals is to generate future explorations of metaphysical religion and its cultural interactions with the evangelical and liturgical forms of American religion. Toward this end she suggests that the metaphysical religious mentality, though varied in its expressions, is characterized by four persistent emphases. First is metaphysical religion's preoccupation with mind and its powers. Second is its implicit acceptance of the ancient cosmological theory of correspondence (that is, the belief that the universe is both multidimensional and interconnected). Third, the metaphysical outlook holds that there are lawful circumstances under which spiritual energy can freely flow between dimensions of the universe. And, fourth, metaphysical religion maintains that the flow of spiritual energy into the human realm automatically yields comfort, therapy, and healing.

This is a book rich with historical detail that scholars will utilize as an invaluable research tool. It is not, however, simply an encyclopedic compendium. First and foremost, it tells a fascinating story of the change and innovation that have defined American spirituality. It also invites methodological reflection even as it informs, cautioning readers that scholarly labels frequently obscure more than they illuminate. And, finally, Albanese cautiously explores the diverse ways that evangelical, liturgical, and metaphysical forms of personal piety interact both on a cultural level and in the personal lives of individuals of many of us. Americans, she observes, have displayed an endless capacity for "combinativeness," creatively linking ideas or practices from sources that at the surface would appear very incompatible. It is thus fortunate that we finally have a historical narrative as imaginative as the spiritual lives it seeks to chronicle.

Robert C. Fuller

Bradley University