American Religious Liberalism

Description

Unconventional expressions of new religious thought

Religious liberalism in America has often been equated with an ecumenical Protestant establishment. By contrast, American Religious Liberalism draws attention to the broad diversity of liberal cultures that shapes America's religious movements. The essays gathered here push beyond familiar tropes and boundaries to interrogate religious liberalism's dense cultural leanings by looking at spirituality in the arts, the politics and piety of religious cosmopolitanism, and the interaction between liberal religion and liberal secularism. Readers will find a kaleidoscopic view of many of the progressive strands of America's religious past and present in this richly provocative volume.

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Parameters and Problematics of American Religious Liberalism
Leigh E. Schmidt
I. The Spiritual in Art
1. Reading Poetry Religiously: The Walt Whitman Fellowship and Seeker Spirituality
Michael Robertson
2. The Christology of Niceness: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Jesus Novel, and Sacred Trivialities
Carrie Tirado Bramen
3. Visible Liberalism: Liberal Protestant Taste Evangelism, 1850 and 1950
Sally M. Promey
4. Discovering Imageless Truths: The Bahá'í Pilgrimage of Juliet Thompson, Artist
Christopher G. White
5. Where "Deep Streams Flow, Endlessly Renewing": Metaphysical Religion and "Cultural Evolution" in the Art of Agnes Pelton
Nathan Rees
II. The Piety and Politics of Liberal Ecumenism
6. "Citizens of All the World's Temples": Cosmopolitan Religion at Bell Street Chapel
Emily R. Mace
7. Spiritual Border-Crossings in the U.S. Woman's Rights Movement
Kathi Kern
8. "We Build our Temples for Tomorrow": Racial Ecumenism and Religions Liberalism in the Harlem Renaissance
Josef Sorett
9. Reading across the Divide of Faith: Liberal Protestant Book Culture and Interfaith Encounters in Print, 1921-1948
Matthew S. Hedstrom
10. The Dominant, the Damned, and the Discs: On the Metaphysical Liberalism of Charles Fort and Its Afterlives
Jeffrey Kripal
11. Liberal Sympathies: Morris Jastrow and the Science of Religion
Kathryn Lofton
12. Jewish Liberalism through Comparative Lenses: Reform Judaism and Its Liberal Christian Counterparts
Yaakov Ariel
III. Pragmatism, Secularism, and Internationalism
13. Each Attitude a Syllable: The Linguistic Turn in William James's Varieties of Religious Experience
Lindsay V. Reckson
14. Protestant Pragmatism in China, 1919-1927
Gretchen Boger
15. Demarcating Democracy: Liberal Catholics, Protestants, and the Discourse of Secularism
K. Healan Gaston
16. Religious Liberalism and the Liberal Geopolitics of Religion
Tracy Fessenden
Afterword and Commentary: Religious Liberalism and Ecumenical Self-Interrogation
David A. Hollinger
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Comparative Religion
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• General officer
• Christianity
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 30 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253002181
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

RELIGION IN NORTH AMERICA
Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein, editors
AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM
EDITED BY LEIGH E. SCHMIDT AND SALLY M. PROMEY
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
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© 2012 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
American religious liberalism / edited by Leigh E. Schmidt and Sally M. Promey.         p. cm. — (Religion in North America)     Includes bibliographical references and index.     ISBN 978-0-253-00216-7 (cl : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00209-9 (pb : alk. paper) —ISBN 978-0-253-00218-1 (ebook) 1. United States—Religion. 2. Liberalism (Religion)—United States. I. Schmidt, Leigh Eric [date]. II. Promey, Sally M., [date]     BL2525.A5443 2012     200.973—dc23                                                   2011050761
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
CONTENTS
Foreword / Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Parameters and Problematics of American Religious Liberalism / Leigh E. Schmidt
PART 1. THE SPIRITUAL IN ART
1   Reading Poetry Religiously: The Walt Whitman Fellowship and Seeker Spirituality / Michael Robertson
2   The Christology of Niceness: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Jesus Novel, and Sacred Trivialities / Carrie Tirado Bramen
3   Visible Liberalism: Liberal Protestant Taste Evangelism, 1850 and 1950 / Sally M. Promey
4   Discovering Imageless Truths: The Bahá'í Pilgrimage of Juliet Thompson, Artist / Christopher G. White
5   Where “Deep Streams Flow, Endlessly Renewing”: Metaphysical Religion and “Cultural Evolution” in the Art of Agnes Pelton / Nathan Rees
PART 2. THE PIETY AND POLITICS OF LIBERAL ECUMENISM
6   “Citizens of All the World's Temples”: Cosmopolitan Religion at Bell Street Chapel / Emily R. Mace
7   Spiritual Border-Crossings in the U.S. Women's Rights Movement / Kathi Kern
8   “We Build Our Temples for Tomorrow”: Racial Ecumenism and Religious Liberalism in the Harlem Renaissance / Josef Sorett
9   Reading across the Divide of Faith: Liberal Protestant Book Culture and Interfaith Encounters in Print, 1921–1948 / Matthew S. Hedstrom
10  The Dominant, the Damned, and the Discs: On the Metaphysical Liberalism of Charles Fort and Its Afterlives / Jeffrey J. Kripal
11  Liberal Sympathies: Morris Jastrow and the Science of Religion / Kathryn Lofton
12  Jewish Liberalism through Comparative Lenses: Reform Judaism and Its Liberal Christian Counterparts / Yaakov Ariel
PART 3. PRAGMATISM, SECULARISM, AND INTERNATIONALISM
13  Each Attitude a Syllable: The Linguistic Turn in William James's Varieties of Religious Experience / Lindsay V. Reckson
14  Protestant Pragmatism in China, 1919–1927 / Gretchen Boger
15  Demarcating Democracy: Liberal Catholics, Protestants, and the Discourse of Secularism / K. Healan Gaston
16  Religious Liberalism and the Liberal Geopolitics of Religion / Tracy Fessenden
Afterword and Commentary: Religious Liberalism and Ecumenical Self-Interrogation / David A. Hollinger
Contributors
Index
FOREWORD
In this new book on American religious liberalism, Leigh Schmidt, Sally Promey, and their coauthors have set themselves a daunting task. To define, dictionaries tell us, is to delimit—to draw a line around what is being defined so that we know clearly what it is and what it is not. Definitions are boundary guards to keep out objects that are not under scrutiny and to mark unmistakably the objects that are. Given this police work, what do scholars do when they need to define an important phenomenon that they and others know is real but that evades easy—and even rigorous—attempts to mark it? How do they find the precision on which definitions depend when their “object” spreads amoeba-like outside its holders and blends into a middle ground that is complex and thick with related and unrelated forms?
To say this another way, religious liberalism, in its American context (and probably elsewhere, too) is messy . Scholars who seek meticulous nomenclature and characterization will, perforce, go home defeated in their encounter with liberalism. To complicate matters further, editors and authors are grappling here not simply with definition in a steady-state world but instead with the fluid and developmental character of a historically contingent category. Add to this the fact that the story of religious history in America is no longer narrowly confined to what might be called classic or traditional theological, spiritual, and devotional categories.
What is therefore so impressive in this new book is the progress Schmidt, Promey, and their coauthors have made in surveying and untangling strands of the liberal phenomenon in religion as it has appeared from the late nineteenth century on. The essays in this volume document the expanding breadth of the American religious narrative and the exploding variety of issues that fall within its purview. They offer rich and nuanced descriptions of the many cases they document, and Schmidt and Promey's categorizations are both descriptive and persuasive. Furthermore, whereas fifty years ago American religious history was being written primarily by scholars in Protestant seminaries and twenty years ago with the noticeable addition of those in religious studies departments, the assortment of professional locations of the contributors to this volume is striking. In our judgment, their varied and multidisciplinary backgrounds are strongly positive measures of the expansion of the subject area and of the expertise of those engaged with it.
As Leigh Schmidt explains in his reflective introduction, the volume is divided into three large sections. Their titles and contents help to pin down the elusive liberal category. Part 1 , “The Spiritual in Art,” juxtaposes essays drawing on Walt Whitman and his poetry as foci for religious seekers, Harriet Beecher Stowe and a nice (and banal) Jesus, and liberal visual culture ranging from Horace Bushnell to Paul Tillich. Further contributions look to Juliet Thompson's artistry and her pilgrimage into the Bahá'í religion, and to the paintings of Agnes Pelton, with their American Indian and Theosophical themes. What is especially noteworthy in this section are the ways that American religious liberalism seems to merge with forms of metaphysical religiosity, a phenomenon of which Leigh Schmidt is well aware and with which he deals fruitfully as he argues for the integrity of the liberal category.
Part 2 , entitled “The Piety and Politics of Liberal Ecumenism,” leaves aesthetic concerns to explore the action orientation of liberalism and liberals in sacred and secular venues. Here the succession of essays moves from an account of the religious and, especially, the ritual position of the liberal Bell Street Chapel in Providence, Rhode Island, to a study of American suffragist Clara Colby, who combined New Thought ideas and the metaphysicalizing views of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore in her feminist synthesis. Here, too, we find discussions of the racial and religious views held by writers involved in the Harlem Renaissance, especially George Schuyler and Langston Hughes, and the impact of liberal book culture in the middle twentieth century evident in Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman's bestseller Peace of Mind (1946). Part 2 also includes an essay that focuses on the strange obsession of Charles Fort, whose search for the unexplained led him to pore endlessly over newspapers and other printed material to unearth oddities that nudge the reader strongly toward metaphysical explanations. At the other end of the liberal spectrum, this section includes an essay that analyzes the methods and views of the early twentieth-century Semitic philologist and scholar of religion Morris Jastrow, and another that compares Reform Judaism's liberalism and that of its Christian counterparts. Although the metaphysical overlap does not go away (witness Charles Fort and Clara Colby), a new form of overlap becomes the agenda in this section. Ecumenism clearly spills outside of Christian containers into other forms of religion as well as into a murky in-between place best described as “spirituality.” All of these developments are not simply proliferating forms of piety, but instances of human action to persuade, convince, and subtly strong-arm others.
Part 3 explores still another dynamic range of issues under the titular banner “Pragmatism, Secularism, and Internationalism.” Introducing this section comes an essay featuring the “pragmatic approach to religion” articulated in William James's Varieties of Religious Experience , followed by another that, with strikingly different concerns, follows the pragmatic thread through John Dewey. Still another essay focuses on the post–World War II period and the Roman Catholic liberals who engaged the discourse concerning secularism. A final essay stakes out a liberal position on the geopolitics of religion and raises serious critical questions about the category of liberalism itself. Together these essays address the ideational substructure of liberalism—the emphasis on discourse and action in a plural an