Theos-Talk Archives (September 2005 Message tt00223)

Hey,

Leigh Eric Schmidt's new book Restless Souls: The Making of American 
Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah "depicts a vibrantly open American 
spirituality and serves as a timely reminder of the ample religious 
resources of the liberal tradition" according to the dust jacket 
description. The author is professor of religion at Princeton. 
Cornel West calls his book a "profound genealogy of the Spiritual 
Left." Schmidt devotes 4 pages to Theosophy in Chapter 
Four, "Meditation for Americans."

Here are Schmidt's characteristics of American religious liberalism:

"individual aspiration after mystical experience or religious feeling;
the valuing of silence, solitude, and serene meditation;
the imminance of the trancendent, in each person as in nature;
the cosmopolitan appreciation of religious variety as well as unity
in diversity;
ethical earnestness in pursuit of justice-producing reforms or
`social salvation';
an emphasis on creative self-expression and adventuresome seeking"
(p. 12) by which criteria, Theosophy has devolved from a profoundly 
liberal movement in the early 20th century to a much more 
conservative movement in the early 21st. 

He concludes his first chapter with this statement of his approach:

"Poised with the historian's caution between criticism and 
celebration, Restless Souls strives to be a fair-minded depiction of 
the origins and unfolding of the American preoccupation with 
spirituality. That judiciousness, though, is not to be confused with 
indifference or neutrality. For those who see themselves as 
spiritual seekers, religious liberalism presents a self-critical 
tradition still very much worth contemplating and engaging."(pp. 22-
23)

Paul