ABOUT THIS BOOK

An ambitious history of desire in Anglo-American religion across three centuries.

The pursuit of happiness weaves disparate strands of Anglo-American religious history together. In The Delight Makers, Catherine L. Albanese unravels a theology of desire tying Jonathan Edwards to Ralph Waldo Emerson to the religiously unaffiliated today. As others emphasize redemptive suffering, this tradition stresses the “metaphysical” connection between natural beauty and spiritual fulfillment. In the earth’s abundance, these thinkers see an expansive God intent on fulfilling human desire through prosperity, health, and sexual freedom. Through careful readings of Cotton Mather, Andrew Jackson Davis, William James, Esther Hicks, and more, Albanese reveals how a theology of delight evolved alongside political overtures to natural law and individual liberty in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Catherine L. Albanese is J. F. Rowny Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of numerous books, including A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion.

REVIEWS

“What if the history of religion in the United States was primarily understood not through piety or respectability but through desire and delight? That is the wager of this startling book by one of the greatest interpreters of American religion. The pursuit of happiness has never been more sensual, mischievous, or weird.”

— Kathryn Lofton, Yale University

“The Delight Makers has all the makings of a classic: richly researched, theoretically original, never jargony, often funny, intellectually adventurous, ontologically sympathetic, keenly aware of our present academic context and its moral concerns, and, in the end, responsive to all. I set the book down in a mood I much expected: admiration, perhaps even delight.”

— Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University

“Here the affections of Jonathan Edwards’s theology, the delights of Emerson’s nature, and the aspirations of William James’s religious psychology commingle with the visions of clairvoyants, the allures of occultists, and the copious promises of mind-cure proponents. The Delight Makers is an expansive and magnetic history of an American cosmology in which longings for beauty, vitality, happiness, and abundance have proven endlessly energizing.”

— Leigh Eric Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis

"Any subject in the hands of eminent historian of American religion Catherine Albanese will be treated with scholarly precision and respect. This is particularly true in this study of some personages she calls 'delight makers.' . . . Published at a time when Americans seem to be seeking all varieties of new forms of pleasure, Albanese’s treatment of delight makers from the 17th to the 21st century will be informative and appreciated by a wide audience, including those outside the academy."

— Choice

"[Albanese's] arrangement of chapters is engaging; her graceful writing pleasing; her command of sources solid; her proposal intriguing. Both those who applaud her ambition and those skeptical of her findings will find plenty in these pages to stimulate reflection, to inform discussion, and to promote debate."

— Nova Religio

For far too long, she argues, historians of American religion have equated “serious” religion with the pious pursuit of otherworldly goods and the mortification of the body. What would happen, she asks, if our narratives instead centered religious projects of desire, delight, and the pursuit of happiness? What if gods just wanna have fun? The Delight Makers is the refreshing result—an alternative history of Anglo-American religious life, told through a series of thinkers and practitioners across three centuries.

— Church History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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