American Religious Liberalism

Leigh E. Schmidt is Edward Mallinckrodt University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and is affiliated with the Center on Religion and Politics. He is author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality.Sally M. Promey is Professor of American Studies, Religion, and Visual Culture at Yale University, where she is also Deputy Director of the Institute of Sacred Music. She is author of Painting Religion in Public: John Singer Sargent's "Triumph of Religion" at the Boston Public Library.

The volume as a whole not only provides the reader with a variety of fascinating stories from the history of American religious liberalism, but also invites us to further reflect on what religious liberalism . . . is about. . . [This] volume is a good specimen of an integral approach to religious liberalism, not primarily focusing on Protestantism but paying attention to Judaism, Catholicism, and a broad variety of free religious movements as well.(Church History and Religious Culture)

• ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Parameters and Problematics of American Religious LiberalismLeigh E. SchmidtI. The Spiritual in Art1. Reading Poetry Religiously: The Walt Whitman Fellowship and Seeker Spirituality Michael Robertson2. The Christology of Niceness: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Jesus Novel, and Sacred TrivialitiesCarrie Tirado Bramen3. Visible Liberalism: Liberal Protestant Taste Evangelism, 1850 and 1950Sally M. Promey4. Discovering Imageless Truths: The Bahá'í Pilgrimage of Juliet Thompson, ArtistChristopher G. White5. Where "Deep Streams Flow, Endlessly Renewing": Metaphysical Religion and "Cultural Evolution" in the Art of Agnes Pelton Nathan ReesII. The Piety and Politics of Liberal Ecumenism6. "Citizens of All the World's Temples": Cosmopolitan Religion at Bell Street ChapelEmily R. Mace7. Spiritual Border-Crossings in the U.S. Woman's Rights MovementKathi Kern8. "We Build our Temples for Tomorrow": Racial Ecumenism and Religions Liberalism in the Harlem RenaissanceJosef Sorett 9. Reading across the Divide of Faith: Liberal Protestant Book Culture and Interfaith Encounters in Print, 1921-1948Matthew S. Hedstrom10. The Dominant, the Damned, and the Discs: On the Metaphysical Liberalism of Charles Fort and Its Afterlives Jeffrey Kripal11. Liberal Sympathies: Morris Jastrow and the Science of ReligionKathryn Lofton12. Jewish Liberalism through Comparative Lenses: Reform Judaism and Its Liberal Christian CounterpartsYaakov ArielIII. Pragmatism, Secularism, and Internationalism13. Each Attitude a Syllable: The Linguistic Turn in William James's Varieties of Religious ExperienceLindsay V. Reckson14. Protestant Pragmatism in China, 1919-1927Gretchen Boger15. Demarcating Democracy: Liberal Catholics, Protestants, and the Discourse of SecularismK. Healan Gaston16. Religious Liberalism and the Liberal Geopolitics of ReligionTracy FessendenAfterword and Commentary: Religious Liberalism and Ecumenical Self-InterrogationDavid A. HollingerContributorsIndex