Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination

This book inquires into the controversies over miracles that have fascinated Christians from the Reformation to the twentieth century. Focusing on the period from 1860 to 1930, Robert Bruce Mullin explores the ways preachers, faith healers, psychic researchers, scientists, historians, philosophers, and writers have grappled with issues of the miraculous. He shows how transforming attitudes toward miracles have changed the Anglo-American religious landscape. "Fascinating. . . . [An] in-depth study of how the notion of the miraculous has evolved in the modern age."-Publishers Weekly "In this thoughtful, wide-ranging study, Robert Bruce Mullin examines the changing fate of belief in the miraculous. . . . A well-crafted study that no serious student of the age or the issue should fail to engage."-Daniel L. Pals, Church History "This is an extremely important and well-written study, and contributes in significant ways to reshaping the discussion of religion in the North Atlantic world in the Gilded Age."-Mark S. Massa, Catholic Historical Review "Mullin's work is remarkably intelligent. . . . [An] excellent book."-Andrew Greeley, History of Religions "How and why the notion of a limited age of miracles lost its commanding place in religious discourse is one of the main themes of Mullin's superbly researched and finely nuanced study. . . . An innovative intellectual history of high caliber."-James H. Moorhead, Theology Today "Mullin has managed to spin an impressively thorough account of his subject in such a way that breathes new life into familiar ideas, figures, and developments (while introducing not a few unfamiliar ones) and freshly illumines their ongoing importance in twentieth-century versions of the miracle debate."-R. Marie Griffith, Journal of the American Academy of Religion