The Book of James

LOCONTE, JOSEPH

The Book of James William James's lectures on religion, a century later. BY JOSEPH LOCONTE A CENTURY AGO, the psychologist, philosopher, and agnostic William James delivered the prestigious...

...Henry Alline, hymn-writer and leader of the Great Awakening in Nova Scotia ("The word of God . . . took hold of me with such power that it seemed to go through my whole soul...
...at least a third of his lectures retell and analyze stories of conversion and saintliness...
...Rationality does not lie on one side or the other," he wrote...
...Historicism was eroding confidence in the reliability of the Bible...
...His basic argument: There is something authentic and profoundly beneficial about religious belief...
...Interestingly, it is social scientists who today are confirming James's finding...
...Paul made our ancestors familiar with the idea that every soul is virtually sacred," he wrote...
...In most of the life histories he examines, it seems what did the trick was the old-time gospel religion...
...Hope had entered into my heart...
...Numerous reflections on James's work have appeared this year, most notably a short book by philosopher Charles Taylor, The Varieties of Religion Today...
...Thus, scientific belief was no less a product of emotional commitment than religious belief...
...The best fruits of religious experience are the best things that history has to show," he wrote...
...All draw attention to James's preoccupation with individual experience...
...From this academic tower of Babel, James sounded a sober and penetrating defense of religious conviction...
...To call to mind a succession of such examples," he wrote, "is to feel encouraged and uplifted and washed in better moral air...
...Hadley, a drunk who helped found the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions ("I felt I was a free man, . . . Christ with all his brightness and power had come into my life...
...The saints, with their extravagance of human tenderness, are the great torch-bearers of this belief, the tip of the wedge, the clearers of the darkness...
...Without a doubt, James angered orthodox believers by ignoring creeds and doctrines...
...Columbia University researchers, for example, recently found that people who consider religion important are significantly less likely to abuse drugs...
...Nevertheless, observers often misread the most provocative aspect of his work: his attention to the transformation undergone by individuals claiming an encounter with a fearsome, yet personal God...
...and S.H...
...And even before Freud, psychologists were wondering if faith itself was the product of sexual desire or even a kind of pathology...
...It is a contest between our fears and our hopes, and both the scientist and the religious believer take a gamble...
...the spiritual seeker longs for a reality that transcends science...
...People who believe the Bible always have insisted that faith produces good works, that the true believer will "look after orphans and widows in their distress...
...Before James, no scholar had devoted such attention to the process—and the effects—of conversion...
...At the University of Pennsylvania, scholars reviewed nearly 800 studies of the relationship between faith and positive social outcomes...
...In the end, it seems, James reached a generous judgment of reli-gion—not in spite of his hard-nosed scholarship, but because of it...
...The scientific mind, he reasoned, fears believing something that may be false...
...James recounts scores of examples in his book...
...With a coolness that must have stunned his materially minded audience, James chastised those who used science as a shield for agnosticism...
...Empiricists denied hard evidence for belief existed...
...BY JOSEPH LOCONTE A CENTURY AGO, the psychologist, philosopher, and agnostic William James delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh...
...His lectures were based on years of investigation into the claims of religious believers...
...into the inner life of the faithful...
...His 20 addresses were published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience, which soon became one of the most widely read works on religious belief by an American...
...French Protestant Adolphe Monod ("My melancholy . . . had lost its sting...
...As professor of physiology at Harvard, he'd established the nation's first laboratory for experimental psychology...
...Liberals love to emphasize his disdain for traditional, institutionalized religion, what he called "the spirit of dogmatic dominion...
...Their conclusion: Strong religious commitment is directly linked to greater social well-being—whether it's a decline in teen pregnancy, depression, or juvenile delinquency...
...No scientist had entered more deeply or respectfully Joseph Loconte is a William E. Simon fellow at the Heritage Foundation...
...We learn about David Brainerd, an early missionary to Native Americans ("My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a God...
...orthodox religion, especially Christianity, had plenty of foes: Darwinists saw a natural world functioning without supernatural intervention...
...The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals...
...English evangelist Billy Bray ("I was like a new man in a new world...
...Aware of how the Methodists valued both theology and "religion of the heart," James told a Harvard divinity professor, "You will class me as a Methodist, minus a Savior...
...James showed little patience for what he considered self-absorbed piety: He was most impressed by believers whose experience of God rescued them from destructive lives and launched them into acts of service...
...In this, they have an ally in the skeptic William James...
...coming from a devoted pragmatist, such observations rocked the secular academy...

Vol. 8 • December 2002 • No. 16


 
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