The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century . By Matthew S. Hedstrom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. x + 278 pp. $55.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century . By Matthew S. Hedstrom . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. x + 278 pp. $55.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesMatthew Hedstrom contributes to a growing body of recent work on American religious liberalism with his analysis of American Protestant book culture from the 1920s through the end of World War II. Focusing upon a range of literary campaigns conducted by liberal Protestant book clubs, and joined during World War II by joint publishing campaigns with Catholics and Jews, Hedstrom shows how an emerging book culture crafted a distinctive form of American popular religion that was geared toward a white, middle-class cultural center (what the author refers to as "middlebrow culture"). He shows how the desire of liberal Protestant leaders to forge a concerted campaign to promote religious literacy through books opened readers to a wider embrace of religious pluralism by the middle of the twentieth century. Increasingly this pluralism was defined not in terms of theological doctrines and beliefs. Rather "the most critical of these new religious developments for twentieth-century religious liberalism were a renewed and transformed emphasis on mystical practice and experience, the healing ministry known as mind cure, and the rise of modern psychology" (15). Ultimately, this religious quest through books opened new vistas of spirituality in the latter half of the twentieth century.An assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Virginia, Hedstrom builds upon a spate of recent scholarship arguing that liberal Protestants were far more influential in shaping religious and cultural worldviews than often given credit. Building upon arguments from Leigh Eric Schmidt's Restless Souls (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), Hedstrom follows religious liberalism's impact beyond the parameters of churches and denominations. Beginning with an examination of religious book clubs in the 1920s, he discusses how these liberal Protestant endeavors lived in tension between a wish to preserve an older Protestant culture of privilege and a desire to capitalize upon a growing consumer demand for reading. Influenced by the insights on religious experience articulated in the early twentieth century by figures such as Rufus Jones and William James, the emerging movement of book publishers promoted religious literacy while increasingly exposing Americans to intellectual currents that moved beyond the exclusive domain of American Protestantism. While these initial efforts in the 1920s and 1930s were often rooted in a hope to promote a vision of America as a Protestant Christian nation, increasingly these book clubs exposed readers to a wide range of religious traditions. This pattern is especially evident in the author's discussion of Eugene Exman. The longtime religion editor at Harper & Brothers (including serving as Harry Emerson Fosdick's editor), Exman's expanding interest in Eastern religion helped foster a spate of works that both promoted the core values of liberal Protestantism while also fostering a growing interfaith consciousness.By the time of World War II, these earlier Protestant reading clubs joined forces with Catholic and Jewish publishing interests to promote reading in both the American military and on the home front. These wartime ecumenical-interfaith campaigns helped forge a distinctive vision of American religion (what would become commonly known in the 1950s as "the Judeo-Christian heritage"). …