Spiritualism in Antebellum America

During the decade before the Civil War, a growing number of Americans gathered around tables in dimly lit rooms, joined hands, and sought enlightening contact with spirits. The result was Spiritualism, a distinctly colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. In this study, Spiritualism emerges as a reflection of and a reaction to many currents in antebellum American life, including more democratic conceptions of religious authority, the revolt against religious formalism, the emergence of new religious groups, the liberalization of Protestant theology, the growing cultural power of science, and the emergence of commercial capitalism.Spiritualism had a particular appeal for Americans who, dissatisfied with conventional religion and uneasy amid the transformations affecting Jacksonian society, were exploring such experimental new movements as mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism. Spiritualism became for its adherents, both the basis for a liberating rebellion against the religious status quo and a new religion that brought order, structure, comfort, and a sense of community to their lives. "Spiritualism in Antebellum America" analyzes the attempt by spiritually restless Americans of the 1840s and 1850s to negotiate a satisfying combination of freedom and authority as they sought a sense of harmony with the universe.