Editor’s Introduction

This issue examines the connections between religion and social/political radicalism across two eras separated by about a century: nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the 1960s–1970s counterculture. Elizabeth Lowry argues that Spiritualism was more deeply tied to antebellum social reforms like abolition and feminism than previously recognized, serving as both a shelter and catalyst for oppositional discourse in what she calls a "counterpublic" sphere. Chris Elcock analyzes how 1960s proponents of psychedelic drugs framed their advocacy through rhetorical appeals to patriotism and freedom, revealing the religious alongside the social and political dimensions of that era's radicalism.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this issue, our authors explore the intersections of religion and social and political radicalism, sometimes in surprising ways. Spiritualism—the phenomenon that swept America in the nineteenth century— had links to political and social movements of the time, notably incipient feminism. Likewise, the pivotal counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s requires that we recognize its religious as well as its social and political aspects, many of which are linked to the use of psychedelics. Our authors explore in new ways the extent and nature of the radicalism of these two periods, separated by about a century. Our first article is Elizabeth Lowry’s “Spiritual (R)evolution and the Turning of Tables: Abolition, Feminism, and the Rhetoric of Social Reform in the Antebellum Public Sphere,” in which she argues that there is a much greater connection between the spiritualist movement of the nineteenth century and dramatic social changes than previously recognized. She emphasizes discourse analysis, as do several authors in our previous and current issues, in this case invoking the notion of “counterpublics,” public spheres of oppositional discourse critical of the mainstream, and analyzing how spiritualism represented both a shelter and a catalyst for such counterpublic discourse. Our second article, Chris Elcock’s “The Fifth Freedom: The Politics of Psychedelic Patriotism,” also focuses on rhetorical analysis, but in his case the subject is how proponents of psychedelic drugs in 1960s