“Truly distinctive and distinguished. Bender captures the subtlety of the religious voices, practices, and struggles of those she terms contemporary metaphysicals living amid shifting economic realities, modern assumptions about science and progress, and related entanglements. This is a remarkable book simply for recording these fascinating practitioners and helping readers understand their categories of practice and experience in all their complexity. But her work does far more than merely record; it offers a compelling examination of how we may think anew about these categories and the people—metaphysicals and scholars alike—for whom they matter. Hilarious and humane all at once: it’s a rare mix, and Bender hits the mark again and again.”

R. Marie Griffith, Harvard Divinity School

“In this rich ethnography of the varieties of contemporary spirituality in William James’ hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Courtney Bender shows—hopefully once and for all—how wrong James was to say that religion is the experience of individuals in their solitude. In a series of beautifully rendered life stories she brings spirituality down to earth and discloses what is most deeply at stake for Americans in being ‘spiritual but not religious.’ The New Metaphysicals promises fundamentally to change how we think not only about contemporary American spirituality but also how we understand what we mean by ‘religion.’”

Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University

“The classic ethnographic impulse is to challenge our scholarly understandings by observing everyday understandings in action. In The New Metaphysicals Courtney Bender instead reveals their complex mutual constitution in our common and standard portrayals of American mysticism as without history or structure. Bender’s brilliant use of the tools of practice theory conveys a sense of long-term yet loose structure. Her thick yet elegant descriptions of the institutions, discourses, and practices that create contemporary American mysticism provide a model for the study of religious traditions. And her reassertion of a more structured and culture-full version of practice theory is a must read for ethnographers of any subject.”

David Smilde, University of Georgia