Spiritualism

In 1948, young sisters Maggie and Katy Fox reported to their family that not only was there a spirit living in their house, but they’d learned how to communicate with it. Friends and neighbors around their house in upstate New York came to bear witness to the spirit’s “rappings,” the girls quickly became celebrity mediums, and the Spiritualist movement took off. Spiritualism coalesced around a belief that the dead live on in a “spirit world” separated from the world of the living by a thin veil. In this spirit world, individual identities and personal connections persist, and the dead can continue to grow and to spiritually mature. The movement’s central practices include seances, trance lectures, mediumship, healings, and other modes of communication with the spirit world. The commercial success of events like public seances and products like Ouija boards have blurred the line between Spiritualism-as-entertainment and Spiritualismas-religion from the tradition’s earliest days. Spiritualists also eschew central organization and have no formal markers of religious affiliation, so no precise figures exist for affiliation. However, scholars estimate that anywhere from 3 to 11 million Americans were participating in Spiritualism at the movement’s peak in the late 19th century. Drawing on previous religious traditions like Mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, and New Thought, Spiritualism followed in the iconoclastic footprints of other new religious movements that came out of the Burned-over District in the 19th century. Early Spiritualists denounced dogmatism and sectarianism of organized religion, and spoke out against the Calvinist notion that humankind is innately sinful. In turn, most Christian churches explicitly disavowed Spiritualism, warning congregants that it was a fraud – or worse, that it was witchcraft. Still, many Spiritualists have historically been practicing Christians, and some churches (especially Quaker, Universalist, and Unitarian churches) have either tacitly or even explicitly welcomed Spiritualism as an outgrowth of Christian practice. Some Spiritualists founded churches of their own, and several associations of Spiritualist Churches exist to this day. The movement also had strong ties to social reform movements, including abolition and women’s suffrage. Spiritualist practice was originally centered in the northern U.S., with another notable pocket of popularity around New Orleans. English-language periodicals, Spiritualist camps, and travelling mediums also connected American practitioners to a transnational network that grew to extend through Great Britain, parts of Canada. The movement was also briefly in vogue throughout continental Europe. Although Spiritualism experienced another surge of popularity in the wake of WWI, it has never regained its 19th century status in the religious and cultural mainstream.

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