Editor’s Introduction
Journal for the Study of Radicalism July 22, 2015 A. Versluis
This issue examines the connections between religion and social/political radicalism across two eras separated by about a century: nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the 1960s–1970s counterculture. Elizabeth Lowry argues that Spiritualism was more deeply tied to antebellum social reforms like abolition and feminism than previously recognized, serving as both a shelter and catalyst for oppositional discourse in what she calls a "counterpublic" sphere. Chris Elcock analyzes how 1960s proponents of psychedelic drugs framed their advocacy through rhetorical appeals to patriotism and freedom, revealing the religious alongside the social and political dimensions of that era's radicalism.