American Spiritualities

<p>This reader explores current interest in spirituality in the United States. It traces the concept and presence of spirituality in the nation's past and explains the strong attraction to spiritual themes in the present with attention to questions of definition historical usage and connection to religion. Twenty-seven selections pursue the difference and diversity among Americans in terms of their spiritual styles here understood as modes of experiential knowledge. Catherine L. Albanese has organized these selections to reflect four approaches to spirituality: knowing through the body or ritual-based spiritualities; knowing through the heart or evangelical and emotionally toned spiritualities; knowing through the will or prophetic and social-action spiritualities; and knowing through the mind or metaphysically oriented spiritualities. Taken together these essays make the argument that the spiritual is human-made essentially religious and surely not the same at all American times and places.<br /><br />The anthology includes selections by Catherine L. Albanese Janet and Robert Aldridge Daniel Berrigan Joseph Epes Brown Charles W. Colson Annie Dillard Virgilio Elizondo Tamar Frankiel Emma Goldman Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe B. K. S. Iyengar Curtis D. Johnson Martin Luther King Jr. Chen Kung Jerena Lee Shirley MacLaine Aimee Semple McPherson Thomas Merton Carry A. Nation E. Burke Rochford Jr. Jerry Rubin Molly Rush Starhawk Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Trine Joachim Wach B. Alan Wallace Steven Wilhelm and Dhyani Ywahoo.<br /><br />Catherine L. Albanese is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author of the widely used textbook America: Religions and Religion now in its third edition and of numerous other articles and books including Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age. Albanese is a former president of the American Academy of Religion.<br /><br />552 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 bibl. index<br />cloth0-253-33839-5$65.00 L / £50.00<br />paper0-253-21432-7$27.50 s / £21.00</p>