Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Religion in North America) Rating :
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Incomplete treatment of subject
By S. J. Morita
My "credentials": I have a published essay entitled "Unseen (and Unappreciated) Matters: Understanding the Reformative Nature of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism" published in the Fall 1999 issue of the journal American Studies.
Carroll's book puts forward a thesis of a conservative angst in search of order. He depicts the "structured religious practice" of seance circles and the Spiritualists' hierarchical conception of heaven as counterbalances to the democratizing tendencies at work in antebellum society. This thesis comes up short when it tries to explain the contemporary portrait of Spiritualists as radical reformers left to us by disapproving novelists and editors.
Carroll's thesis may well have merit when it comes to some Spiritualists. I think the problem arises when he tries to lump all nineteenth-century Spiritualists together. I part company with him in seeing a more fundamental gap between those individuals he calls "Christian" and "rationalistic" Spiritualists. The latter whom I identify as Philosophical Spiritualists were clearly freethinkers reformers who dared to advocate upsetting the emerging socio-economic order. So many of these individuals have been left out of Carroll's book that were he to take them into account, I suspect that even he would say his thesis needs some revision. (Generally speaking, I think historians of American Religion by understandably assuming that Spiritualism was a religion of consolation have missed a lot of source material which might have led them in different directions.)
One last note for the general reader: Carroll's book is not a particularly easy read. It is filled with scholarly references, so much so that I think they sometimes interfere with the narative.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Spiritualism Unmasked
By A Customer
This is a brilliant, thoroughly researched, and thoroughly illuminating book. Though the prose and the ideas will be tough sledding for anyone looking for a light read on nineteenth-century mediums and seances, careful readers will be richly rewarded for their patience. This is an outstanding book for students of American religious and cultural history.
Product Description
"At a time when the New Age movement is starting to make good on the Spiritualists' vision of America as a 'grand clairvoyant nation', Carroll's work raises provocative questions about the tension betwen freedom and authority in the harmonial religions of today." —Church History
"... offers the most comprehensive, sane examination of its topic yet available, no mean achievement for a subject long afflicted by religious partisanship and now perhaps in danger of sympathetic attraction." —Journal of American History
"... fascinating reading it will be for those with a taste for good scholarly writing and a love of the American past and the manifold varieties of the spiritual quest." —The Quest
"In addition to being an excellent introduction to mid-19th-century Spiritualism, Carroll’s work also offers scholars a new vantage point from which to view the religious creativity that was so prominent in antebellum America in general." —Choice
During the decade before the Civil War, a growing number of Americans gathered around tables in dimly lit rooms, joined hands, and sought enlightening contact with spirits. The result was Spiritualism, a distinctly colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. ÂSpiritualism in Antebellum America analyzes the attempt by spiritually restless Americans of the 1840s and 1850s to negotiate a satisfying combination of freedom and authority as they sought a sense of harmony with the universe.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2162882 in Books
- Published on: 1997-10-22
- Released on: 1997-10-22
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.41" h x6.26" w x.75" l,1.07 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 248 pages
No comments :
Post a Comment