The Religious Revolution- The Birth of Modern Spirituality, 1848

An incisive study of the Western world's shift from institutional religion to more personal beliefs in the second half of the nineteenth century . . . This is intellectual history at its most comprehensive and convincing. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)The late nineteenth century was an age of grand ideas and great expectations fueled by rapid scientific and technological innovation. In Europe, the ancient authority of church and crown was overthrown for the volatile gambles of democracy and the capitalist market. If it was an age that claimed to liberate women, slaves, and serfs, it also harnessed children to its factories and subjected entire peoples to its empires. Amid this tumult, another sea change was underway- the religious revolution. In The Religious Revolution, Dominic Green charts this profound cultural and political shift, taking us on a whirlwind journey through the lives and ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, of Eliphas Levi and Helena Blavatsky, of Wagner and Nietzsche, of Marx, Darwin, and Gandhi. Challenged by the industrialization, globalization, and political unrest of their times, these figures found themselves connecting with the religious impulse in surprising new ways, inspiring others to move away from the strictures of religion and toward the thrill and intimacy of spirituality.