The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination

Abstract

When most people think of Cambridge, Massachusetts, they probably think about the prominent institutions of higher education located there and imagine it as among the most secular places in North America. Who knew that around every corner one might find spiritual pilgrims of every sort exploring their past lives and chakras? Courtney Bender's choice of location for this study of “individual religious experience” provides, then, exactly the sort of paradox that provokes a fascinating exploration of the ways in which spirituality is “entangled” (to use her term) in everyday spaces where we might not expect to find it. The extraordinary character of the experiences being described (what she notes as the “woo–woo factor”) does create challenges. She is often forced into both awkward efforts at setting off statements with skeptical quotation marks and quite ingenious turns of phrase (“the mystical pasts of past lives … ” [124]). On balance, she manages this exploration of contemporary metaphysicals with a skeptical openness that appropriately blurs the lines of our expectations.