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After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s, by Robert Wuthnow
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The evolution of American spirituality over the past fifty years is the subject of Robert Wuthnow's engrossing new book. Wuthnow uses in-depth interviews and a broad range of resource materials to show how Americans, from teenagers to senior citizens, define their spiritual journeys. His findings are a telling reflection of the changes in beliefs and lifestyles that have occurred throughout the United States in recent decades.
Wuthnow reconstructs the social and cultural reasons for an emphasis on a spirituality of dwelling (houses of worship, denominations, neighborhoods) during the 1950s. Then in the 1960s a spirituality of seeking began to emerge, leading individuals to go beyond established religious institutions. In subsequent chapters Wuthnow examines attempts to reassert spiritual discipline, encounters with the sacred (such as angels and near-death experiences), and the development of the "inner self." His final chapter discusses a spirituality of practice, an alternative for people who are uncomfortable within a single religious community and who want more than a spirituality of endless seeking.
The diversity of contemporary American spirituality comes through in the voices of the interviewees. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and Native Americans are included, as are followers of occult practices, New Age religions, and other eclectic groups. Wuthnow also notes how politicized spirituality, evangelical movements, and resources such as Twelve-Step programs and mental health therapy influence definitions of religious life today.
Wuthnow's landmark book, The Restructuring of American Religion (1988), documented the changes in institutional religion in the United States; now After Heaven explains the changes in personal spirituality that have come to shape our religious life. Moreover, it is a compelling and insightful guide to understanding American culture at century's end.
- Sales Rank: #1202771 in Books
- Published on: 1998
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .80" w x 6.00" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 286 pages
Amazon.com Review
In The Restructuring of American Religion, Robert Wuthnow examined the changing patterns of institutional religion in contemporary America. In After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s, he makes a similar analysis of personal spirituality. His basic argument is that professional and social mobility makes it hard for Americans to sustain spiritual life because they don't feel rooted in one place; therefore, they embark on spiritual searches "characterized more often by dabbling than by depth." In contrast to these "dwelling-oriented" and "seeking-oriented" spiritualities, Wuthnow observes that increasing numbers of religious people are turning to "practice-oriented" spirituality--"making a deliberate attempt to relate to the sacred" through disciplines such as reading, prayer, and service. Wuthnow is passionately interested in the question of how an individual's search for spiritual identity affects our society, so he explains that although practice-oriented spirituality may initially seem to weaken the authority of religious institutions, spiritual practices "ultimately sustain these institutions by giving individuals the moral fortitude to participate in them without expecting too much from them." Wuthnow's prose is clean and clear, and his argumentation is thoroughly humane: every idea is conveyed through stories taken from interviews with hundreds of people of varying ages, races, religions, and classes. After Heaven stands with Wuthnow's previous work, and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart as a landmark in the sociology of religion. --Michael Joseph Gross
From Library Journal
Analyzing the development of spirituality in the last half-century, Wuthnow (God and Mammon in America, LJ 9/1/94) uses in-depth interviews and opinion surveys?and a firm grasp of existing scholarly material on the subject?to effectively draw connections between individual experiences and wider cultural developments. Showing how the meaning of spirituality has grown and changed over the past 50 years, Wuthnow contrasts the more stable but comforting "dwelling-oriented" spirituality with the more dynamic but less secure "seeker-oriented" spirituality. After tracing the relationship between these two approaches from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, he then suggests what he calls "practice-oriented" spirituality as a way to give both "roots and wings" to spirituality in the future. Anyone interested in the field will definitely want to read this work, a scholarly and readable examination with some creative insights. Recommended for academic and public libraries.?C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, IN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Basing his argument on detailed interviews of a wide range of respondents, on existing research studies, and on large-scale opinion surveys, Wuthnow describes a shift in the spiritual orientation of Americans. A spirituality of "dwelling" was characteristic of mainline denominations up through the 1950s; animated by a desire to be in place, it emphasized habitation, which was expressed as belief in God's occupation of definite places (hence the emphasis on places of worship) as well as through the American drive to settle. In the aftermath of the unsettling 1960s, the spirituality of dwelling gave way to one of "seeking," which was marked by negotiation. In the closing chapter, Wuthnow draws on philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre's account of spiritual practice to propose a spirituality cognizant of the Benedictine vows of stability, conversion, and obedience, and on David Steindl-Rast, who de-emphasizes practices (i.e., means) in favor of practice (i.e., the end). This is a readable and provocative report whose references will offer further direction to those who want to pursue its themes. Steven Schroeder
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
american pastiche religion - trenchant, hopeful analysis
By gddorsey@erols.com
Robert Wuthnow is the most prolific and most interesting contemporary sociologist of religion, delving again into the ambiguous heart of American spirituality. This study is certainly the most accessible, popular analysis of religious trends since the 1950s, with a startlingly convincing interpretation of how attitudes about religion and spirituality have changed in the post-modern era. Read this and await his next study. Wuthnow's done a great service to our understanding of what sometimes seems to be a most perplexing trend from domestic religion to a kind of amorphous, inauthentic spirituality of seeking.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
An Adequate and Useful Source for Studying Christian Spirituality
By Candi Dugas LLC
INTRODUCTION
To understand Christian spirituality in the latter half of the twentieth century, Robert Wuthnow summarized his research primarily by describing those who relate spirituality to dwellings, describing those who are constantly seeking spirituality, and providing his alternative to these two paths. I find his research to be truthful; however, he seems to have a bias against and to be more critical of the notion which he describes as spiritual seeking. Following are my thoughts regarding his descriptions of dwelling versus seeking and his proposed alternative of practice.
"DWELLING VERSUS SEEKING SPIRITUALITY"
To view trends in American spirituality against a backdrop of our social patterns is insightful and one that I find quite helpful as I aspire to understand how and why Americans approach Christian spirituality. A more staid approach to spirituality makes sense in the 1950s as does an exploratory approach in the 1960s.
Wuthnow's work prompts some questions for me as a scholar and as a Christian. I want to hear more about how institutionalized religion has moved most Americans to the perspective that their spirituality must develop outside of these traditional places. Also, by reading the characteristics of seekers, I am coming to identify myself as one and I never would have characterized myself as such. I believed a seeker to be one who is not quite settled on her/his way of faith, belief, and practices. I am firmly a Christian who finds value in tradition, but prefers contemporary expressions of my faith. Yet, Wuthnow's description resonates, ". . ., growing numbers of Americans piece together their faith like a patchwork quilt." Officially I am a United Methodist, yet a huge part of my relationship with God is founded upon my Roman Catholic influences. Additionally, I find worth in non-Christian mystical traditions that I incorporate into my faith practice as long as they do not conflict with my foundational Christian tenets. I do not believe I have to give up any for the others. Besides I find a unique beauty in such a "quilt."
Unsettling is the faint hint of bias I find in Wuthnow's writing of seeking spirituality. His word choices seem to indicate that dwelling spirituality has more credence. To allow one's spiritual experience to be fluid does not mean that these experiences are fleeting or without social support. Wuthnow's inability to recognize wider possibilities indicates a bend toward dwelling spirituality.
"PRACTICE SPIRITUALITY"
While Wuthnow may find dwelling spirituality more acceptable, he recognizes it is a reality that has passed given current social trends in America. Therefore, he presents an alternative to both dwelling and seeking spirituality. However, his alternative is not an alternative at all.
To present practice spirituality as an alternative to dwelling and seeking spirituality, I find problematic. This presentation presumes that seekers do not practice rituals or disciplines. One can practice seeking spirituality. That is, a Christian can believe that spirituality is bigger than the building one inhabits for prescribed times of ritual. This belief alone does not necessarily mean that the person does not practice her/his spirituality.
Wuthnow purports that the element of practice adds a necessary aspect to seeking spirituality, one of stability, continuity. In essence, practice adds to seeking what it lacks in comparison to dwelling. Again, such a view is not necessarily true for seekers. One can seek and still have an "orderly, disciplined, and focused approach to the sacred." Wuthnow's conclusions are tinted - as mine probably are at this moment.
CONCLUSION
Despite the bias Wuthnow appears to have toward dwelling spirituality and the shallowness of his alternative - practice spirituality - I find his work to be helpful and insightful regarding trends in American spirituality in the latter twentieth century. I also find his work helpful as I begin to write more on spirituality. When presenting research objectively (as much as possible) I need to be conscious of my language and the tone of my writing so that my work is balanced. However, given my passion for the subject, I may choose to openly write as an advocate for non-traditional approaches to Christian spirituality.
Reviewer: Candi Dugas, M.Div., is a D.Min. candidate at Columbia Theological Seminary (Decatur, GA) and the author of Bootlicked to Balanced: Healing the Mind, Freeing the Spirit. Her D.Min. thesis is Who Told You that You Were Naked? Creating Space for Black Women to Reclaim their Goodness as Sexual and Spiritual Beings.
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