Review: The Delight Makers: Anglo-American Metaphysical Religion and the Pursuit of Happiness, by Catherine L. Albanese

Abstract

Book Review| November 01 2023 Review: The Delight Makers: Anglo-American Metaphysical Religion and the Pursuit of Happiness, by Catherine L. Albanese The Delight Makers: Anglo-American Metaphysical Religion and the Pursuit of Happiness. By Catherine L. Albanese. University of Chicago Press, 2023. 360 pages. $99.00 hardcover; $30.00 softcover; ebook available. Rose Ann Christian Rose Ann Christian Towson University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2023) 27 (2): 135–137. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.27.2.135 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Rose Ann Christian; Review: The Delight Makers: Anglo-American Metaphysical Religion and the Pursuit of Happiness, by Catherine L. Albanese. Nova Religio 1 November 2023; 27 (2): 135–137. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.27.2.135 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search In an engaging introduction to her lively yet scholarly book, Catherine L. Albanese announces a multifaceted project. Her ultimate aim, she explains, is to illuminate the agenda of a handful of figures active in the early twenty-first century whose performances, publications, and workshops she showcases in her appreciative final chapters. Yet in pursuit of this seemingly limited aim she proposes to achieve much more, for her strategy is to assign representatives of the movement of interest to her to a distinctive albeit neglected tradition of American spirituality, one that she terms, alternatively, “the theology of desire and delight” or “the theology of abundance.” The major conclusion of her study, she declares at the outset, is that “the theology of desire and delight is American theology” (10). Albanese’s ambitious project is grounded in a set of deliberately partial readings of the work of a wide range of contributors to American thought,... You do not currently have access to this content.