Religion & Psychology

Notes from Nineteenth Century American Spiritualism: An Attempt at a Scientific Religion, by Mary Farrell Bednarowski (1973 Ph.D. Thesis)

A key aspect of the 19th century experience of religion in the US and Britain was the cultural conflict between religion vs. science, which gave rise to new religious movements, the most broad-based and popular of which was Spiritualism. The same conflicts were at the birth of psychology as a science early in the 20th century.

Bednarowski''s sources were primarily writings by Spiritualists, and she focused on their reasons for converting to the new faith in the face of religious conflicts and doubts.

Beginnings of Spiritualism: 1848 with the "rappings" of the Fox sisters. (We won't go into the history -- rapid rise of spirit phenomena and cultivation of mediums to channel spirit voices, chiefly of discarnate/deceased spirits. Many of the key experiences and beliefs persist in some forms of nontraditional U.S. religion in contemporary times; other aspects feature in popular culture, such as in the ongoing popularity of the Ouija Board.)

Mary cites 1859, the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species, as the date usually given for the beginning of the science-religion conflicts that tore through the second half of the 19th century, but this publication was really the culmination of developments in the first half in
philology
archeology
geology
anthropology
comparative religions
Higher Criticism (of the Bible)

Higher Criticism featured attacks on doctrines such as the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ (compare to recent publications contesting the Resurrection). Originally, this work was based on comparative and close reading of the Scriptures pointing out inconsistencies (if you look at the ads in some magazines, you can order pamphlets on scriptural inconsistencies). The rise of the other disciplines above also impacted on understandings of Scriptures (such as the age of the earth, or the non-Jewish origins of some Old Testament texts, contesting the beliefs in divine revelation in Scripture).

Originally, this scholarly debate took place in scientific journals and religious journals, gradually seeping into popular understanding. Some people were happy to abandon earlier Christian belief -- George Eliot, Andrew Carnegie, John Dewey. But many others felt torn and lost, with nothing to replace orthodoxy but "abandonment in an indifferent universe." This conflict between the
need to believe
and
the desire to know/ have certainty
led to cognitive dissonance

Science and religion were experienced as both authorititative, attractive, and mutually exclusive -- both were essential to identity and making sense of the world, but people felt they had to make a choice.

Science versus Faith

investigation & inquiry versus truth of revelation

uncertainty as reality versus uncertainty as shortcoming

doubt as virtue, or stepping stone versus doubt as sin, stumbling block

People felt they had three choices:
agnosticism (or less commonly, atheism)

Fundamentalism (stop probing the mysteries beyond human realm. . .)

or some kind of compromise --
--"two revelations" -- those of natural and supernatural;
--softening, liberalizing theology while focus on ethics, spirituality
--coming to a new kind of religion

Spiritualism as religion and science

Spiritualism was promoted as a religion and as a science; its results, its proofs were demonstrable, relying on spiritual laws parallel to the natural laws of the physical world -- Spiritualism saw itself as a "new revelation" of truth.

Theology of Spiritualism

--optimism
--no final death -- just a change to a spiritual body in a spiritual land, much like this one (familiar and home-like), where people continued to grow
--believers were free from the burden of faith
--free from what they saw as superstition
--free from organized church authority
--Humanity partook of divinity
--universal salvation
--no need for fear of hell; no need for atonement, etc. for salvation
--evil (echoing Emerson) was simply lack of good

The church as institution was seen as having corrupted original Christianity, where Christ and the Apostles were in direct communication with the world of spirit.

Christ was seen as a role model, rather than as God; the first and best of clairvoyant mediums.

The Bible was seen in differing ways: questions were raised about how much it was "revealed" or inspired -- but general agreement that the time of revelation had not ended with the Scriptures, as orthodoxy held.

Spiritualism generally adapted what was useful in Christianity and left the rest.

Spiritualists believed in "spiritual affinity" and worked for marriage reform -- this led to scandals and accusations of "free love." This, by the way, connected to the prominence of women in the movement; with no ordained clergy, women were frequent leaders and speakers. And, because they were simply the passive vehicles for spirit voices, they could retain their femininity while appearing on public platforms (otherwise frowned upon). Interestingly, because they were seen as too simple-minded for serious intellectual work, the level of complexity or profundity in their speaking was seen as evidence that spirits (male) were speaking through them (this analysis from Braude).

Doctrines Rising From 19th Century Culture

Many religious ideas came from Quakerism and Shakerism. Some influence from Mesmerism (a theory that invisible magnetic fluid pulsed between heavenly bodies and human bodies, which could be manipulated by trained healers).

Transcendentalism: Emerson wrote and spoke about the essential goodness and divinity of humans; the absence of evil as a real force; the importance of positive affirmation in religious attitudes; the Oversoul as available to all.

Universalism: a popular religious movement which taught that all people had holiness.

Swedenborgianism: generally attractive to more intellectuals, but influential on Spiritualists. Swendenborg derived much of his understanding of spiritual realities through communication with spirits, but not of deceased humans. He described a post-death heaven or state where spirits continue to work and grow, and reform of marriage. However, he also warned against initiating spirit contact, as he came to believe spirits could be demonic or malicious, and could mislead people through impersonating deceased -- having access to the memories of both living and dead. He based this warning on his own experience.

While Spiritualism was a religion patched together from other sources, the pieces all fit together: optimism, divinity of the human, the certainty of the world to come, and the basic understandability -- human scale -- of the world to come. This was tied together by seeing what they did as science.

Spiritualism as Science

For Spiritualists, belief wasn't enough -- they needed proof, evidence, use of the experimental method. They believed that natural laws would apply to both materials and immaterial realism.

They were critical of the church's unwillingness to submit to scientific observations (such as those from geology and Higher Criticism), and critical of science for excluding from their investigations the possibility of spiritual dimensions. They operated in a scientific manner:
controlled situations
regulation of variables
careful observation
use of critical analysis

They published careful instructions on how to set up a spirit circle in order to gain replicability of phenomena. They discussed how to adjust for variations in quality of mediums; they discussed ways of accounting for some of the disappointing quality of spiritual communications (such as silliness, vagueness, or downright maliciousness).

In their interest in science, Spiritualists were open to many popular pseudo-sciences of the day, as well as alternative medicine and spiritual/mediumistic/psychic healing methods. They developed other psychic talents, such as psychometry (seeing the history of an object, or giving a psychological description of a personality).

Though they saw themselves as scientific, there were many debunkers among the scientific community -- and a few converts. But not until the 1880's was there a really substantial scholarly inquiry, with the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research in England (William James became the leader of the U.S. branch). With 150 members in 1883, the Society grew to 946 in 1900, and published objective studies of psychic phenomena, but was never fully accepted by the scientific/scholarly community.

(Note: the estimates of numbers of Spiritualists range from one million up to 15 million, though most likely on the low end with a much larger number of people less seriously involved, or sporadically involved.)

Why Choose Spiritualism?

People chose the new face for comfort in the face of the loss of loved ones and in the face of their own mortality. When Christian dogma was no longer credible (such as having to accept the physical resurrection of Christ as a basis for faith), people needed a different faith. A similar phenomenon is the widespread acceptance of reincarnation in alternative religions today.

When unable to cope comfortably with the loss of orthodox faith, people accepted Spiritualism as offering proof of life after death in place of annihilation. And people stayed with the new faith even in the face of some scandals or their own experience of uneven messages or disreputable mediums because
-- they were committed to the community
-- they had already suffered scorn or pain for adopting the new faith
-- the whole set of beliefs was interlocking, mutually supportive, and comforting -- and the alternative was suffering from skepticism and doubt.

(This will also hold true in looking at contemporary believers in cults.)

Placing Spiritualism in context of other religious developments:

--> Swedenborgianism -- founded mid to late 1700's - Emmanuel Swedenborg had experienced direct communication from spirits, but felt this could only be done by very spiritually developed people, as there were good and bad spirits. His own experience led to a large body of philosophical writing examining and reforming religious beliefs, and to a movement that exists today following his religious findings (a Swedenborgian church in St. Paul).

--> Theosophy -- a movement of the late 1800's, involving rediscovery and popularization of Eastern religious beliefs, such as reincarnation. This was the beginning of a popular fusion of Eastern and Western religion (though this interconnection had happened earlier in the 19th century with the work of Schopenhauer, Goethe, and the Transcendentalists). (Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant.)

--> Early 20th century on -- Rosicrucians -- added onto the Eastern religious views a teaching of ancient wisdom of the West -- the notion that there is a secret religious discipline that people can be introduced to -- similar in some respects to first-century (time of early church) Gnosticism.

--> In Europe, the foundation of Anthroposophy (founder Rudolph Steiner - 1861-1925) very much influenced by Goethe -- accepted as real the existence of spiritual realm, and ways of interacting with it.)

--> mid-20th century -- psychic development movements such as Silva Mind Control (founded by Jose Silva with money he reportedly got from following a dream about where to buy a raffle ticket).

--> a very popular mid-20th century movement -- Edgar Cayce, medium and healer. Reportedly successful in many long-distance healings. Cayce accepted Christianity and the importance of Christ as teacher and leader, but also accepted reincarnation, communication with spirits, many psychic phenomena, the use of gems as psychic tools, and the fall of Atlantis -- which suggested a danger for over-industrialized cultures.

The main phenomena of Spiritualism continued, with new mediums channeling new revelations: the Seth Books, Course in Miracles, extraterrestrials (lots of info on the Web about this). Other related popular movements: many books about near-death experiences; many books about experiences with angels.

In recent decades -- also the Esalen studies on all sorts of alternative healing, psychologies, and spiritualities, and mind/body research (Harvard institute) drawing on non-Western psychologies.

Similar psychic or unconventional experiences happened to founders of Jungian psychology, but they were explained differently -- as phenomena rising from the "Unconscious" rather than from the "Spiritual Realm" -- though many Jungians ended up in practice treating the two as two descriptions of the same reality.