The World’s Parliament of Religions and the Rise of Alternative Spirituality

This chapter examines the presence and influence of the New Spirituality at one of the more significant events in the history of modern religion, the World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893. It offers a portrait of some of the New Spirituality’s most important characteristics at this time, as well as some reflections on its relation to wider socio-cultural contexts of the late nineteenth century. The chapter suggests the broad category of the ‘New Spirituality’ as a tool which can help map and make sense of the modern religious scene. Even the most radical proponents of the New Spirituality echoed belief in progress and the ideal of religious unity, as well as in the values of industry, indvidualism, and service. The gradual dissolution of this cultural world throughout the first half of the twentieth century inevitably led to changes in the New Spirituality in the twentieth.