oh this should be rich

I just came across a new (well, January 2007) book -- A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion -- by Catherine L. Albanese, and I can't wait to read it. I can't wait to read it because, while masquerading as chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Albanese is actually a major cheerleader and weird-sister hyper-booster for precisely the eclectic blend of spooky out-there mumbo-jumbo that Mystic Bourgeoisie was established to abuse, malign, ridicule, disparage and generally belittle. In this, I count my perspective one of the great advantages of not being a purportedly "objective" academic. When will people stop imagining that a Ph.D. after somebody's name is a gaurantee she's not selling something? I picked up another of her books -- Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age -- as I was deeply interested in the advertised subject matter. What I wasn't expecting, but got, was an extended advertisement for the subject matter. Clearly, Catherine has not read her McCutcheon. It's bad enough when professors profess Jesus Christ from the secular pulpits afforded by university classrooms. Why should it be any less deplorable to campaign for Hermes Trismegistus in a coonskin cap? And while I'm at it, just en passant: I have never once been disappointed in my expectation that William James will be invoked in such displays of blind-leading-the-blind faith. I'm holding out more hope for The Occult in Nineteenth-Century America. Let's hope that, unlike Albanese, Cathy Gutierrez is more inclined to critical scholarship than to trying to sell me on the wondrous marvels of superstitious horseshit.

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