The diversity and extensiveness of American personal religious writing makes it impossible for a single book to represent every perspective. The excerpts chosen by Professor Gaustad are above all interesting because they involve perennial decisions about moral life, discipleship, and practical living. Here readers will find Mary Rowlandson's reflections during the adversity of captivity, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise and Reinhold Niebuhr in the thick of ministry, Richard Allen founding the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Virginia Sorensen remembering a killing which occurred in her Mormon community as a young woman. The excellent introductions to the selections will be helpful to the general reader, but less so to scholars, who will find more complete references for deceased authors in The American National Biography . The introductions do not mention textual issues about the selections.
Every text has a context, and sometimes the context is thick and complex.
For the ordinary reader seeking spiritual insight textual issues are a minor problem, but scholars should be wary of mining the excerpts for illustrations of generalizations without considering the background of the excerpt. Memoirs of the Spirit may prove useful as a sourcebook for classes in United States religious history, but its true audience would seem to be spiritual seekers rather than academics. Here readers will discover a harvest of insights. Indeed, it is such a good read that the book makes an ideal ecumenical gift at holiday, graduation, or adult initiation time.