Spiritualism
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[edit] Definition
Spiritualism is a religious movement that began in the United States and was prominent in the 1840s – 1920s, especially in English-speaking countries. The movement's distinguishing feature is the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums. These spirits are believed to lie on a higher plane of existence than humans, and are therefore capable of providing guidance in both worldly and spiritual matters.
[edit] Origins
Modern Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York where earlier religious movements such as Millerism (Seventh Day Adventists) and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening. It was an environment in which many people felt that direct communication with God or angels was possible, and in which many people felt uncomfortable with Calvinist notions that God would behave harshly — for example, that God would condemn unbaptized infants to an eternity in Hell.
Spiritualists often set March 31, 1848 as the beginning of their movement. On that date, Kate and Margaret Fox, of Hydesville, New York, reported that they had made contact with the spirit of a murdered peddler. What made this an extraordinary event was that the spirit communicated through audible rapping noises, rather than simply appearing to a person. The evidence of the senses appealed to practical Americans, and the Fox sisters became a sensation.
Amy Post and Isaac Post, Hicksite Quakers from Rochester, New York, had long been acquainted with the Fox family, and took the two girls into their home in the late spring of 1848. Immediately convinced of the genuineness of the Fox sisters' communications, they became early converts and introduced the girls to their circle of radical Quaker friends. It thus came about that many of the early participants in Spiritualism were radical Quakers and others caught up in the reforming movement of the mid-nineteenth century. These reformers were uncomfortable with established churches because those churches did little to fight slavery and even less to advance women's rights.
Women were particularly attracted to the movement, because it gave them important roles as mediums and trance lecturers. In fact, Spiritualism provided one of the first forums in which American women could address mixed public audiences. Cora L. V. Scott (1840–1923) was the most popular trance lecturer prior to the American Civil War. Young and beautiful, her appearance on stage fascinated men. Her audiences were struck by the contrast between her physical girlishness and the eloquence with which she spoke of spiritual matters, and found in that contrast support for the notion that spirits were speaking through her. Cora married four times, and each time adopted her husband's last name. During her period of greatest activity she was known as Cora Hatch.
Another famous woman spiritualist was Achsa W. Sprague, who was born November 17, 1827, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. At the age of 20, she became ill with rheumatic fever and credited her eventual recovery to intercession by spirits. An extremely popular trance lecturer, she traveled about the United States until her death in 1861. Sprague was an abolitionist and an advocate of women's rights. Yet another prominent Spiritualist and trance medium prior to the Civil War was Paschal Beverly Randolph, an African American "Free Man of Color", who also played a part in the Abolition movement.
But despite widespread fraud, the appeal of Spiritualism was strong. First and foremost, the movement appealed to those grieving the death of a loved one: the resurgence of interest in Spiritualism during and after the First World War was a direct response to the massive number of casualties. But the movement also appealed strongly to reformers, who found that the spirits were in favor of such causes du jour as equal rights. The movement also appealed to those who had a materialist orientation and had rejected organized religion. The influential socialist and atheist Robert Owen embraced religion following his experiences in Spiritualist circles.
Many scientific men who investigated the phenomena also ended up being converted. These include the chemist William Crookes, the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), and the physician and author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). The idea of formally studying psychic phenomena seems to have originated with the spiritualist E. Dawson Rogers, who hoped to increase the respectability of spiritualism. This effort was bolstered by the desire of some eminent scientists to give spiritualistic phenomena scientific credibility. The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882, and by 1887 eight members of the British Royal Society served on its council. Soon after, many spiritualists are said to have left the SPR due to the skepticism within the SPR about some prominent mediums. However, the SPR continued its research, publishing its finding periodically in its Proceedings. Other societies were soon set up in most countries in Europe, and the American SPR was founded in 1885.
[edit] Later Developments
After the 1920s, Spiritualism evolved in three different directions. The first of these continued the tradition of individual practitioners, organized in circles centered on a medium and clients, without any ecclesiastical hierarchy or dogma. Already by the late nineteenth century Spiritualism had become increasingly syncretic, a natural development in a movement without central authority or dogma. Today, among these unorganized circles, Spiritualism is not readily distinguishable from the similarly syncretic New Age movement. These spiritualists are quite heterogeneous in their beliefs on issues such as reincarnation or the existence of God. Some appropriate New Age and Neo-Pagan beliefs, and others call themselves 'Christian Spiritualists', continuing with the old tradition of cautiously incorporating spiritualist experiences into their Christian faith.
The second direction taken by Spiritualism has been to adopt formal organization, patterned after formal organization in Christian denominations, with established creeds and liturgies, and formal training requirements for mediums. In North America the Spiritualist churches are primarily affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, and in the UK with the Spiritualists National Union, founded in 1891. Formal education in spiritualist practice emerged in 1920, continuing today with Arthur Findlay's College of Psychic Studies. Diversity of belief among organized spiritualists has led to a few schisms, the most notable occurring in the UK in 1957 between those who held Spiritualism to be a religion sui generis, and a minority who held it to be a denomination of Christianity. The practice of organized Spiritualism today resembles that of any other organized religion, having discarded most showmanship, particularly those elements resembling the conjurer's art. There is thus today a much greater emphasis on "mental" mediumship and an almost complete avoidance of the miraculous "materializing" mediumship that so fascinated early believers such as Arthur Conan Doyle.
The third direction taken by Spiritualism has been a continuation of its empirical orientation to religious phenomena. Already as early as 1882, with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, secular organizations emerged to investigate spiritualist claims. Today many persons with this empirical approach avoid the label of "Spiritualism," preferring the term "Survivalism." Survivalists eschew religion, and base their belief in the afterlife on phenomena susceptible to at least rudimentary scientific investigation, such as mediumship, near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, electronic voice phenomena, and reincarnation research. Many Survivalists see themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Spiritualist movement.
[edit] Fraud
In the years following the sensation that greeted the Fox sisters, demonstrations of mediumship (séances and automatic writing, for example) proved to be a profitable venture, and soon became popular forms of entertainment and spiritual catharsis. The Foxes were to earn a living this way and others would follow their lead. Showmanship became an increasingly important part of Spiritualism, and the visible, audible, and tangible evidence of spirits escalated as mediums competed for paying audiences. Fraud was certainly widespread, as independent investigating commissions repeatedly established, most notably the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission. Perhaps the best-known case of fraud involved the Davenport Brothers.
In 1888, Margaret Fox herself confesed to faking her spirit raps and demonstrated her methods in public to large audiences. [1] This was met by accusations from Spiritualists that she was being paid by skeptics to fraudulently pretend to be a fraud.
[edit] Related Topics
[edit] References
Carroll, Bret E. 1997. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33315-6.
Braude, Ann. 2001. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21502-1
Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1926. The History of Spiritualism. New York: G.H. Doran, Co. ISBN 1-4101-0243-2
Brandon, Ruth. 1983. The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc
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