Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity / Edition 1

by Pamela E. Klassen

Overview

Spirits of Protestantism reveals how liberal Protestants went from being early-twentieth-century medical missionaries seeking to convert others through science and scripture, to becoming vocal critics of missionary arrogance who experimented with non-western healing modes such as Yoga and Reiki. Drawing on archival and ethnographic sources, Pamela E. Klassen shows how and why the very notion of healing within North America has been infused with a Protestant "supernatural liberalism." In the course of coming to their changing vision of healing, liberal Protestants became pioneers three times over: in the struggle against the cultural and medical pathologizing of homosexuality; in the critique of Christian missionary triumphalism; and in the diffusion of an ever-more ubiquitous anthropology of "body, mind, and spirit." At a time when the political and anthropological significance of Christianity is being hotly debated, Spirits of Protestantism forcefully argues for a reconsideration of the historical legacies and cultural effects of liberal Protestantism, even for the anthropology of religion itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520270992
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/14/2011
Series:	The Anthropology of Christianity , #13
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Pamela E. Klassen is Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xxv

Introduction: Healing Christians 1

1 Anthropologies of the Spiritual Body 30

2 The Gospel of Health and the Scientific Spirit 58

3 Protestant Experimentalists and the Energy of Love 100

4 Evil Spirits and the Queer Psyche in an Age of Anxiety 137

5 Ritual Proximity and the Healing of History 169

Conclusion: Critical Condition 209

Notes 219

Archives Consulted 283

Selected Bibliography 285

Index 305

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A courageous and balanced treatise. . . . A nuanced call for the careful analysis of the seemingly familiar."—Somatosphere

"A rich portrait of 20th century Protestant liberalism."—Religion

Editorial Reviews

"An exceptionally detailed, historically grounded and comprehensive account."

Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society - Toomas Gross

A rich portrait of 20th century Protestant liberalism.

Religion - Heather D. Curtis

A courageous and balanced treatise. . . . A nuanced call for the careful analysis of the seemingly familiar.

Somatosphere - Willson Wills