The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination

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.

Author: Courtney Bender
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 07/15/2010
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 8.92h x 6.33w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9780226042800
ISBN10: 0226042804
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Sociology of Religion
- Religion | Spirituality
- History | United States | General

About the Author
Courtney Bender is associate professor of religion at Columbia University and author of Heaven's Kitchen: Living with Religion at God's Love We Deliver, also published by the University of Chicago Press.