America: land of spiritual hunger

From flourishing megachurches to potent voices in the political arena, the growth of conservative Christianity is fully on display. Many attribute this growth to Americans' desire for an anchor in a swiftly changing world, a set of rules to live by.

Yet the surge in spiritual seeking beyond the bonds of organized religion continues apace as well. Less than half of Americans attend church in any given week, though only 2 percent say they don't believe in a higher power.

In recent polls, 84 percent say spirituality is important in their lives, and 62 percent consider themselves "deeply spiritual."

How did America become a land of spiritual questing?

Leigh Schmidt, religion professor at Princeton University, takes issue with what he sees as a facile analysis of the "new spirituality" that has tied it simply to watershed events of the 1960's and New Age philosophies. Nor is it always, he says, an outgrowth of the occultism in early American life, as some have asserted.

In Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality, Dr. Schmidt explores the cultural roots of this broader search for meaning. He finds its origins in the intellectual circles of early 19th- century America and its evolution in "the rise and flourishing of religious liberalism in all its variety and occasional eccentricity." Criticizing the orthodoxies of their day, liberals exchanged piety for spirituality.

What could be called the "Spiritual Left" goes "deep in the grain of American culture," he says. "It is here for the long haul."

In its commitment to individual searching, reconciliation among faiths, and social progress, this spiritual left is "not a rootless baby-boomer quest," he insists, "but a more deeply grounded and complex exploration of a cosmopolitan spirituality."

While it includes romantic, even naive elements, he notes, it is also rooted in the yearning for a more direct relationship with God or the divine that feeds the deepest hungers of the heart.

Beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendental Club in 1838, Schmidt presents his story largely through the inner lives of prominent figures - individuals who today might be termed "thought leaders." (Among them, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, William James, Swami Vivekenanda, Rufus Jones, Sarah Farmer, Howard Thurman, Oprah).

It is also a tale of spiritual communities - Greenacre, Pendle Hill, Trabuco - where kindred souls shared the fruits of their searches and experimented with spiritual practices.

From Transcendentalists through Reform Jews and progressive Quakers, New Thought leaders, and proponents of Eastern religions, they imagined themselves to be charting a path "away from the old 'religions of authority' into a new 'religion of the spirit.' "

For some, it became a search for a universal spirituality that would seek common ground among faiths of East and West, and break down barriers and religious hostilities.

"Restless Souls" provides a vivid picture of the spiritual ferment of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and introduces many whose writings or speeches crystallized developing thought.

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