Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality by Leigh Eric Schmidt (PDF)

Description

Yoga classes and Zen meditation, New-Age retreats and nature mysticism―all are part of an ongoing religious experimentation that has surprisingly deep roots in American history. Tracing out the country’s Transcendentalist and cosmopolitan religious impulses over the last two centuries, Restless Souls explores America’s abiding romance with spirituality as religion’s better half. Now in its second edition, including a new preface, Leigh Eric Schmidt’s fascinating book provides a rich account of how this open-road spirituality developed in American culture in the first place as well as a sweeping survey of the liberal religious movements that touted it and ensured its continued vitality.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Leigh Eric Schmidt is Edward C. Mallinckrodt University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of numerous books,including Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman, HearingThings: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment, and Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a scholarly history of what Harold Bloom, called “the American Religion,” that is, the tradition of individual spiritual seeking which has a major source in Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, James–you know, the usual suspects. It’s a useful counter-balance to the line from major thinkers like Robert Bellah (whom I admire enormously) that Americans under-value tradition, community, self-control, and discipline. As Schmidt points out, things are more complicated than that. There’s a passion in this book, and Schmidt has his own point of view that comes through strongly without becoming overbearing (in my view). If you have a scholarly bent and are interested in spirituality, religion, or politics, you’ll find this book stimulating even if you don’t agree with it.

⭐There is some very interesting literature on this subject out there and this one reads like a textbook. I had to read it for a class (Spiritual But Not Religious at UVA) and the only bad thing about the class is this book.

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