Fits, Trances, and Visions: experiencing religion and explaining experience from Wesley to James

Fits, Trances, & Visions is a wide-ranging cultural study of some of the most controversial and dramatic expressions of Christian spirituality. Faith healing, possession, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, speaking in tongues, animal magnetism, and even hypnotized crabs are among the many subjects described by the fearless Ann Taves, a professor of history and religion at Claremont College. The book's primary focus is the debate between religion and psychology about the sources of such dramatic spiritual experiences. From the mid-18th to the early 20th century, believers and skeptics clashed over the question of whether God was supernaturally present in these experiences, or whether they were merely natural expressions of physical disease or psychological disorder. Taves is especially attentive and sympathetic to the conclusion reached in the early 20th century by William James, who argued that charismatic spirituality was both natural and religious. Taves does sometimes get bogged down in theoretical language, but Fits, Trances & Visions is noteworthy for offering sympathetic and sophisticated attention to a realm of religious experience that too often receives little more than scholarly scorn. --Michael Joseph Gross