An ambitious history of desire in American religion across over three centuries.
The pursuit of happiness weaves disparate strands of American religious history together. In The Delight Markers, Catherine L. Albanese unravels a theology of desire tying Jonathan Edwards to Ralph Waldo Emerson to the religiously unaffiliated today. As others emphasize redemptive suffering, this tradition stresses the "metaphysical" connection between natural beauty and spiritual fulfillment. In the earth's abundance, these thinkers see an expansive God intent on fulfilling human desire through prosperity, health, and sexual freedom. Through careful readings of Cotton Mather, Andrew Jackson Davis, William James, Esther Hicks, and more, Albanese reveals how a theology of delight evolved alongside political overtures to natural law and individual liberty in the United States.
An ambitious history of desire in American religion across over three centuries.
The pursuit of happiness weaves disparate strands of American religious history together. In The Delight Markers, Catherine L. Albanese unravels a theology of desire tying Jonathan Edwards to Ralph Waldo Emerson to the religiously unaffiliated today. As others emphasize redemptive suffering, this tradition stresses the "metaphysical" connection between natural beauty and spiritual fulfillment. In the earth's abundance, these thinkers see an expansive God intent on fulfilling human desire through prosperity, health, and sexual freedom. Through careful readings of Cotton Mather, Andrew Jackson Davis, William James, Esther Hicks, and more, Albanese reveals how a theology of delight evolved alongside political overtures to natural law and individual liberty in the United States.
Catherine L. Albanese is J. F. Rowny Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of numerous books, including A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion.
"The Delight Makers traverses American history, poignantly
highlighting the human quest for happiness. Albanese integrates the
biographies of each figure with illuminating readings of their
thought--a remarkable achievement given the intellectual heft of
Edwards, Emerson, Bushnell, and James, and the complexity of the
twentieth century writers. . . . The Delight Makers offers a rich
and multilayered argument that contributes to many different
sub-disciplines, illuminates non-mainstream religious traditions,
synthesizes an immense amount of important American religious
writing, and raises fascinating questions for American history
generally."-- "Fides et Historia"
"In The Delight Makers, Albanese has yet again made an essential
contribution to the history of American spirituality."-- "Journal
of Religion"
For far too long, she argues, historians of American religion have
equated "serious" religion with the pious pursuit of otherworldly
goods and the mortification of the body. What would happen, she
asks, if our narratives instead centered religious projects of
desire, delight, and the pursuit of happiness? What if gods just
wanna have fun? The Delight Makers is the refreshing result--an
alternative history of Anglo-American religious life, told through
a series of thinkers and practitioners across three centuries.--
"Church History"
"The Delight Makers has all the makings of a classic: richly
researched, theoretically original, never jargony, often funny,
intellectually adventurous, ontologically sympathetic, keenly aware
of our present academic context and its moral concerns, and, in the
end, responsive to all. I set the book down in a mood I much
expected: admiration, perhaps even delight."--Jeffrey J. Kripal,
Rice University
"Here the affections of Jonathan Edwards's theology, the delights
of Emerson's nature, and the aspirations of William James's
religious psychology commingle with the visions of clairvoyants,
the allures of occultists, and the copious promises of mind-cure
proponents. The Delight Makers is an expansive and magnetic history
of an American cosmology in which longings for beauty, vitality,
happiness, and abundance have proven endlessly energizing."--Leigh
Eric Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis
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