Infidel Spiritualism: Emma's Fatal Mistake

A note from a colleague (thanks, Leslie) about Timothy Larsen's Crisis of Doubt spurs me to post this interesting letter, received by J. M. Peebles while in England in 1870, and included in J. O. Barrett's biography of Peebles, Spiritual Pilgrim.

In this observation -- that Emma's strident anti-Christian rhetoric (as early as the late 1860s) was marginalizing her among those who believed Christianity and Spiritualism were reconcilable discourses -- there is something important, I think: something that may go some way to explaining why Emma failed, ultimately, to get a seat at the table when Spiritualism was institutionalized, on both sides of the Atlantic, beginning in the 1890s.

I have been thinking of Emma's biography as having the title "The Propagandist", but perhaps "Infidel Spiritualist" is more a propos.