American Metaphysical Movements
In the Northeast and Midwest, disorientation amid rapid industrialization, urbanization, westward expansion, and the rising authority of science impelled some middle-class Americans of the mid- to late 19th century to explore new spiritual frontiers.
Many of the resulting new movements flourished in the dynamic and still unformed culture of California.The first to emerge was Spiritualism, based on a belief that human mediums could establish scientifically verifiable contact with spirits and transmit religious truth in ritualized seances. Its origins lay in New York’s burned-over district, where in 1848 Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville claimed to have communicated with spirits through coded knockings. The practice spread from the Northeast and Midwest to California—though less in the South, where it was associated with abolitionism—accompanied by a liberal theology, by visions of eternal progression after death through a hierarchy of “spheres,” and by assurances that spirits were working to bolster traditional republican morality and promote social reform in a commercializing society. Spiritualists shunned centralized structures and formal creeds, seeking instead personal growth in small seance groups. But they developed Sunday services in such large cities as New York and Boston, founded a few congregations, and formed shortlived utopian communities at Mountain Cove in western Virginia and Kiantone in western Pennsylvania. They later established communities and camps from New York and Massachusetts to Florida to New Mexico and California, many of which still exist. New York, Chicago, and San Francisco became important centers of activity. In 1893, Spiritualists meeting in Chicago formed the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, now the nation’s largest such organization. Other, smaller organizations followed in the 20th century.
Theosophy developed somewhat later, when mystically inclined Russian immigrant Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–91) and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) rejected Spiritualism to pursue deeper metaphysical searching. They formed the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875, which attracted well-educated and spiritually dissatisfied urbanites by promoting occult knowledge, spiritual growth, universal brotherhood, and Asian religious wisdom through meditative contact with advanced spiritual guides (Mahatmas). Blavatsky and Olcott increasingly infused Asian elements into Theosophy after migrating to India in 1878 and converting to Buddhism in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1880. This change prompted the formation of the rival Theosophical Society of America, established in New York in 1895 and later relocated to Pasadena, California. Vigorous Theosophical activity on the West Coast produced the Point Loma colony near San Diego, founded in 1898, and the United Lodge of Theosophists, founded in Los Angeles in 1908. Back East, the original society moved in a Hindu direction, established new headquarters in Wheaton, Illinois, and grew to a membership of about 50,000 in forty countries (10,000 in the United States) by 1930. Theosophy remains small and largely confined to urban elites, but has been a major vehicle for blending Asian and Western traditions in American religious life.
The most visible new metaphysical movement, Christian Science, emerged when invalidism, emotional suffering, social dislocation, and financial instability led New Hampshire Congregationalist Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) to seek personal spiritual power. Her sudden recovery from a fall prompted her to develop a religious system based on the convictions that disease, death, evil, and matter were illusory, that Jesus’ love is the only reality, that belief in this truth brings health and redemption, and that Jesus had developed “scientific” healing methods.
She established the Church of Christ, Scientist in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1879 and in 1881 founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, from which her students, mostly socially marginalized working-class urban women, spread to cities across the nation as “practitioners.” As the movement expanded geographically, increased numerically, and attracted members of prestige and wealth, Eddy developed a tightly centralized bureaucratic structure, relocating to Boston and reorganizing the Boston church as the First Church of Christ, Scientist in 1892. It became and remains the movement’s headquarters. Chicago became an important secondary center. The church grew quickly during the early 20th century, particularly in the urban Northeast, Midwest, and California, while remaining relatively weak in the South. By 1936 had nearly 270,000 American members in more than 2,000 churches. By the late 1970s, Christian Science claimed about 475,000 members—mostly middle-class urbanites and suburbanites—and appealed to the spiritually curious through hundreds of “reading rooms” in the nation’s malls and shopping districts.
The success of Christian Science encouraged the development of other, similar healing movements and organizations, usually urban in orientation and founded by people critical of Eddy’s perceived autocracy. In Boston, Eddy critic Julius A. Dresser (1838–93) established the Church of the Higher Life in 1882. And in Chicago Christian Science apostate Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925) organized followers in cities nationwide and established the Christian Science Theological Seminary in 1888. Her students in turn founded such movements as Divine Science, based in Denver, and Religious Science, based in Los Angeles. More successful than any of these was the Unity School of Christianity, established in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1889 and thereafter expanding into a national communications empire encompassing hundreds of local centers. In the 1890s, many of the various “mind cure” movements began to coalesce under the name “New Thought” and to form organizations—such as the National New Thought Alliance (1906)—to coordinate and facilitate activities nationwide. New Thought groups spread along roughly the same geographic and demographic lines as did Christian Science, and have maintained roughly the same regional distribution.
Despite small membership and distinct regional appeals, metaphysical movements remain viable alternatives and supplements to more conventional religiosity. They have also been highly influential, their success prompting many mainline Christian denominations to promote personal healing and their ideas figuring prominently in current New Age spirituality as Americans have continued to seek spiritual wholeness.
