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Praise for

RESTLESS SOULS

“In our perplexing age of religious revivals and conservative politics, this brilliant book lays bare the deep Emersonian roots of quintessential figures and movements of American spiritual seeking—figures like the inimitable Walt Whitman, Felix Adler, Vida Scudder, and Howard Thurman, or movements at Greenacre and Pendle Hill, who combined mystical quests with progressive politics. Schmidt's profound genealogy of our spiritual left is a source of hope in our present-day crisis.”

—Cornel West, Ph.D., author of Democracy Matters

“Restless Souls should help correct the misimpression created by the religious right that liberal forms of spiritual experimentation play an inconsequential part in U.S. religious history. On the contrary, as Schmidt argues, their roots are deep, complex, longstanding, and no less central to a proper understanding of what American spirituality has been, is, and should be all about.”

—Lawrence Buell, Harvard University, author of Emerson

“Restless Souls immerses the reader in a history of spiritual seeking. No other book gives us so broad a grasp of this lineage from Emerson to Oprah. Informative and fascinating reading.”

—Wade Clark Roof, J. F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Leigh Schmidt offers an historical tour of American spirituality that is a tour de force—and written in a lovely and lucid style that befits its subjects.”

—Ronald C. White Jr., author of The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words

“Can you will a book into being? For the longest time now I've wished someone would write the history of America's ‘other’ spirituality, but Leigh Schmidt's Restless Souls is even better than I'd imagined such a book might be. It pleases me in so many ways, not the least being the respect, verging at times on tenderness, with which these quirky, quintessentially American visionaries are portrayed.”

—Carol Lee Flinders, author of Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics

“Nowadays millions of Americans claim to be ‘spiritual, not religious,’ and Schmidt's capacious, entertaining history reveals how deeply this sentiment has been plowed into American culture over the last two centuries. Restless Souls breaks new ground in detailing how in the United States secularity and religiosity have bolstered rather than battled one another. Must reading for anyone intrigued by the profound cultural accord that underlies our ongoing cultural wars.”

—Richard Wightman Fox, author of Jesus in America

“In this rich and fascinating study, Leigh Schmidt pioneers in illuminating the spiritual and mystical themes in American religious history and, just as usefully, makes a convincing case for the vital importance of an oftslighted liberal religious movement.”

—William Hutchison, Warren Research Professor of American Religious

History, Harvard University, and author of Religious Pluralism in America

“The culture of liberal spirituality has long been stigmatized as an oxymoron by the Christian right and a therapeutic capitalist conceit by the academic left. With energy, cogency, and compassion, Leigh Schmidt has restored this almost lost nineteenth-century tradition of the quest for spiritual experience, cosmopolitan religion, and social justice. Restless Souls is an urgently needed book for a restless and fragmented time.”

—Charles Capper, Professor of History, Boston University,

and author of Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life

“Leigh Schmidt's wonderful new book rescues the Sheilas of the American world and points unmistakably to their seriousness as religious seekers—with a long lineage in liberal Protestantism. Written with wit and verve and a wealth of details, Schmidt's work superbly documents the combinative world of networks and meetings out of which the contemporary spirituality movement emerged.”

—Catherine L. Albanese, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Liberal religious spirituality gets short shrift from Christian conservatives and secular cultural critics alike, who dismiss it as a fraud and a fad, but Leigh Schmidt provocatively proves it to be a significant American faith tradition—one that over a century and a half has produced deep thinkers and even saints.”

—Dean Grodzins, author of American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism