Almost four decades ago William Hutchison wrote the then-definitive work on “the modernist impulse” in American religious life. He viewed religious liberalism through the lens of intellectual history and focused exclusively on the nation's Protestant theological heritage. Not surprisingly, Hutchison framed liberal religion as the way that certain progressive ideas long-grown in Protestant theology guided those adjusting to the defining features of a dawning modernity (for example, science, biblical scholarship).

Leigh Schmidt and Sally Promey set out to explore the broad diversity of American religious liberalism free from the categories that constrained Hutchison's vision of this fluid spiritual impulse. To do this they invited sixteen scholars to contribute original essays exploring topics that might be broadly characterized as 1) spirituality in the arts, 2) the agendas born of religious cosmopolitanism, and 3) interactions between religious and secular forms of liberalism.

It is somewhat ironic that many of the strongest essays in the collection echo at least parts of Hutchison's basic take on the liberal strain of American religious thought. Christopher White, for example, tells the fascinating story of artist Juliet Thompson. Living in an era when Christian claims to superiority were undermined by increased interreligious contact and modern biblical scholarship, Thompson discovered the universalist message of the Baha'i’ faith en route to discovering an artistic style enabling her to experience a spiritual presence through material forms. Matthew Hedstrom's article in the book's second section shows that the push for greater interfaith connections led many Americans beyond religious parochialism to a cosmopolitan faith that dissolved fixed orthodoxies. Hedstrom focuses on the wide reading audiences for books that John Dewey described as written “for the people who feel inarticulately that they have the essence of the religious with them and yet are repelled by the religion and are confused” (221). Bestselling books, many promoted by the Religious Book Club, provided new vocabularies that rendered personal faith consistent with the latest scientific thinking and sensitivity to cross-cultural diversity. Yaakov Ariel's essay on Jewish liberalism similarly understands Reform Judaism in terms of the same impulses Hutchison and others discern in liberal Protestantism such as embracing the idea of progress, affirming scientific discoveries, and incorporating higher criticism of the Bible.

An insight developed through several of the book's essays has to do with the role that metaphysical religion has played in historical expressions of American religious liberalism. Whereas intellectual historians typically focus on “highbrow” sources of theology, the decidedly “middlebrow” philosophies associated with western esotericism and New Thought have played important roles in stretching Americans’ ontological imaginations in ways that encourage theological innovation. Hedstrom notes, for example, that the Religious Book Club did not hesitate to feature books written by Carl Jung, Ralph Waldo Trine, D. T. Suzuki, Kahlil Gibran, Alan Watts, and Aldous Huxley. Jeffrey Kripal provides an instructive vignette of the metaphysical roots of liberal theology in his overview of Charles Fort's fascination for all things uncanny. Fort's struggle was as much against scientific materialism as it was against theological orthodoxy. Reality, he believed, conformed to neither conceptual framework and authentic spirituality must therefore include an energetic quest to seek out events that might illuminate the mysterious causal powers underlying worldly appearances.

Edited volumes typically illustrate the old adage that our strengths are simultaneously our weaknesses. This volume's strength is that the varied essays highlight specific examples of religious liberalism that might not be fully appreciated within familiar historical paradigms. Co-editor Leigh Schmidt concedes that this open approach risks a lack of conceptual rigor when he asks “at what point do our nets catch too many anomalies and oddities and thus cease to be useful screens at all?” (9) Taken individually, the essays succeed at illuminating what in their time were religious anomalies. Yet only a few of the essays generate useful conceptual screens for understanding either the root sources or defining attributes of this protean impulse in American religious life.

Fortunately, both Leigh Schmidt's introduction and David Hollinger's concluding essay help the volume's heterogeneity become an asset rather than a liability. Hollinger deftly focuses on the way that Harvey Cox and John Robinson were able to tap into the emotional and intellectual conflicts that animate religious liberalism. Hollinger cites Cox as he suggests that religious liberalism arises “‘when the cosmopolitan confrontations of city living exposed the relativity of the myths and traditions’ once thought to be ‘unquestionable” (374). The clash between parochial and cosmopolitan viewpoints generates an experiential dissonance that sets individuals in search of new models of cognitive plausibility. Hollinger proposes that the essential function of liberal religion is aiding the transition whereby people feel emotionally and intellectually comfortable moving outside religious systems they deem no longer viable. He consequently suggests that the history of religious liberalism move beyond the study of various religions to the study of how we engage various religious issues. When we do this, the stories of anomalous individuals (for instance, Robert Ingersoll, John Dewey, Sam Harris, Juliet Thompson, or even Charles Fort) factor much more significantly in our understanding of the root sources and varied expressions of religious liberalism. Promey's and Schmidt's volume is a laudable step in this direction.