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AFTER HEAVEN

SPIRITUALITY IN AMERICA SINCE THE 1950S

A stirring, eloquent commentary on contemporary Americans— spiritual condition. Why do millions of Americans claim they are spiritual but not religious? This contemplative interpretation by leading sociologist of religion Wuthnow (Sociology/Princeton; God and Mammon in America, 1994, etc.) postulates that while the 1950s and earlier eras promoted a spirituality of dwelling (tied to a particular place of worship and to the family), the post-1960s era has emphasized one of seeking. The religious journey has become somehow more important than actually arriving (or staying) in any one place. It’s not just that Americans no longer opt for longtime commitment to religious institutions; it’s a fundamental paradigm shift proclaiming that the individual spiritual quest is more meaningful than religious community, and that Americans now understand the sacred to abide in themselves, not in traditional establishments. If all this smacks of the ’60s, it’s with good reason: one of the most cogent arguments of this book is that the legacy of the ’60s has profoundly affected not only the immediate participants in the upheavals of that decade, but all Americans. In the 1990s, for example, we see the ephemeral seeker of spirituality of the ’60s come to a logical conclusion in our cultural obsession with angels: when angels visit, they don—t demand that we go to church, make lasting spiritual commitments, or change our behavior in any way. Such encounters are brief, subjective, and almost always therapeutic, like ’90s spirituality. Wuthnow shows that, as God has become less immediately a part of our cultural —geography,— we rely more heavily on friendly intermediaries. Angels thus demonstrate the anxieties many Americans have about God, not an upsurge in new religious sentiment. Occasionally preachy (especially about why Reagan was the perfect symbol of the shallow spirituality of the ’80s), but always subtly perceptive, this is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand noninstitutional religion in America.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-520-21396-3

Page Count: 263

Publisher: Univ. of California

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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