Fits, Trances, and Visions

"One of the most important contributions not only to the study of American religious history, but more broadly to the study of religion, which has appeared in recent years. . . . [It] should be of great interest to students of religious phenomena no matter what their particular field of study."---Peter W. Williams, Catholic Historical Review

Autorentext
Ann Taves is Professor of the History of Christianity and American Religion at the Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Mid-Nineteenth Century America and Religious and Domestic Violence in Early New England: The Memoirs of Abigail Abbott Bailey.

Klappentext
Fits, trances, visions, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, possession. Believers have long viewed these and similar involuntary experiences as religious--as manifestations of God, the spirits, or the Christ within. Skeptics, on the other hand, have understood them as symptoms of physical disease, mental disorder, group dynamics, or other natural causes. In this sweeping work of religious and psychological history, Ann Taves explores the myriad ways in which believers and detractors interpreted these complex experiences in Anglo-American culture between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Taves divides the book into three sections. In the first, ranging from 1740 to 1820, she examines the debate over trances, visions, and other involuntary experiences against the politically charged backdrop of Anglo-American evangelicalism, established churches, Enlightenment thought, and a legacy of religious warfare. In the second part, covering 1820 to 1890, she highlights the interplay between popular psychology--particularly the ideas of "animal magnetism" and mesmerism--and movements in popular religion: the disestablishment of churches, the decline of Calvinist orthodoxy, the expansion of Methodism, and the birth of new religious movements. In the third section, Taves traces the emergence of professional psychology between 1890 and 1910 and explores the implications of new ideas about the subconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, and dissociation for the understanding of religious experience. Throughout, Taves follows evolving debates about whether fits, trances, and visions are natural (and therefore not religious) or supernatural (and therefore religious). She pays particular attention to a third interpretation, proposed by such "mediators" as William James, according to which these experiences are natural and religious. Taves shows that ordinary people as well as educated elites debated the meaning of these experiences and reveals the importance of interactions between popular and elite culture in accounting for how people experienced religion and explained experience. Combining rich detail with clear and rigorous argument, this is a major contribution to our understanding of Protestant revivalism and the historical interplay between religion and psychology.

Inhalt
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi ABBREVIATIONS xiii INTRODUCTION 3 PART ONE. FORMALISM, ENTHUSIASM, AND TRUE RELIGION, 1740-1820 13 CHAPTER ONE Explaining Enthusiasm 20 CHAPTER TWO Making Experience 47 CHAPTER THREE Shouting Methodists 76 PART TWO: POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY AND POPULAR RELIGION, 1820-1890 119 CHAPTER FOUR Clairvoyants and Visionaries 128 CHAPTER FIVE Embodying Spirits 166 CHAPTER SIX Explaining Trance 207 PART THREE: RELIGION AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS, 1886-1910 251 CHAPTER SEVEN The Psychology of Religion 261 CHAPTER EIGHT Varieties of Protestant Religious Experience 308 CONCLUSION 348 NOTES 363 NAME INDEX 435 SUBJECT INDEX 441

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