Why Isn't 'Spirituality' Enough?...Continued from page 1

Albert Mohler

But if Bellah and company--joined by observers such as David Brooks and Martin E. Marty--think that the rise of spirituality at the expense of traditional faiths is problematic, Schmidt argues that American liberals should embrace spirituality as a means of gaining political momentum and rebuilding social capital.

Historical Vision

Schmidt argues for a longer historical vision. Modern versions of American individualism, he argues, are simply the expansion and continuation of a line of individualistic thinking that runs back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and a host of others. Martin E. Marty may argue that the conflict between "spirituality" and "religion" is "a defining conflict of our time," but Schmidt suggests a cease-fire.

As Schmidt reviews the history of American spirituality, he sees in Emerson, Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau a combination of "spiritual journeying" and "political progressivism." As he explains, "Emerson's 'endless seeker' was, as often as not, an abolitionist; Whitman's 'traveling soul,' a champion of women's rights; Henry David Thoreau's 'hermit,' a challenger of unjust war."

Beyond this, Schmidt is convinced that correctives to excessive individualism were already present in nineteenth century America. He points to William R. Alger, a transcendentalist of the second generation and a Unitarian minister. Alger championed Thoreau's concern for the spiritual while rejecting his solitude. Indeed, Alger criticized Thoreau as "constantly feeling himself, reflecting himself, fondling himself, reverberating himself, exalting himself, incapable of escaping or forgetting himself."

Alger apparently recognized that Thoreau's extreme form of individualism led to a "self-nauseated weariness" rather than to social progress.

Schmidt also points to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a radical abolitionist who later served as a colonel in an African-American regiment in the Civil War. Higginson took Thoreau and Algier one step further, arguing that Americans should simply embrace spirituality as a diverse testimony to one fundame

ntal reality. In Higginson's words: "I have worshiped in an Evangelical church when thousands rose to their feet at the motion of one hand. I have worshiped in a Roman Catholic church when the lifting of one finger broke the motionless multitude into twinkling motion, till the magic sign was made, and all was still once more. But I never for an instant have supposed that this concentrated moment of devotion was more holy or more beautiful than when one cry from a minaret hushes a Mohammedan city to prayer, or when, at sunset, the low invocation, 'Oh! The gem in the lotus--oh! The gem in the lotus,' goes murmuring, like the cooing of many doves, across the vast surface of Tibet."

Cosmopolitan Piety