If we take Cathy Gutierrez’s depiction of nineteenth-century Neoplatonic Spiritualists in Plato’s Ghost (2009)—grief counselors before psychotherapy, hardcore political reformists, educators of a nascent ecumenism plausibly associated with ‘spirituality’—as evident, what has become of these practitioners? Catherine Albanese has attempted to unveil just that. The Delight Makers (2024), building on her masterwork in cultural history, Republic of Mind and Spirit (2007), pursues, primarily through Christian theological undercurrents, the genealogical question: Can we trace a line from, at least, nineteenth century practitioners of the American metaphysical tradition to recent figures? It is clear that this tradition did not end with the mid-to-late twentieth century life and work of Norman Vincent Peale, even after his political ‘fall from grace’ years following the success of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and subsequent career in persuasive marketing. Kate Bowler, in her highly influential historical account on the American Prosperity Gospel, Blessed (2013), convincingly posits that Peale’s ‘gospel of health, wealth, and abundance’ stems from nineteenth-century New Thoughters and continues to rear its head in modern Protestant televangelists and the genre of Self-Help. While Bowler situates Peale’s legacy within the prosperity gospel and its ancestry, Albanese makes a more provocative claim in Delight Makers: that the metaphysical tradition should not be relegated to an ‘evangelical subculture’ but understood as American theology itself—a national fusion of Christian thought and market logic.
My current interest in the American metaphysical tradition lies in its contemporary influence on American politics. Newly-reelected President Donald Trump has frequently acknowledged Norman Vincent Peale as a direct influence—a figure shaped by mind-cure practitioners such as Phineas Quimby and his disciples, Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins, whose lineage traces back to Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, among others. This raises a key question: Are the ideological currents of New Thought so deeply woven into American culture that they have shaped a national ethos, ingrained enough to be widely accepted and capable of electing Trump twice? Or is New Thought merely an idiosyncratic philosophical-spiritual movement, lacking the breadth to exert such influence?
This paper has two goals. First, to place the works of Albanese, Gutierrez, and Bowler in conversation about the American metaphysical tradition today, particularly in light of Albanese’s fresh through line, a ‘theology of desire’. Second, to discuss how Trump’s political decisions—within his ‘Make America Great/Healthy Again’ paradigm—reflect and reinforce the rags-to-riches, neoliberal ideology of a Horatio Alger novel.
Working References
Albanese, Catherine. The Delight Makers: Anglo-American Metaphysical Religion and the Pursuit of Happiness. University of Chicago Press, 2024.
–––. Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. Yale UP, 2007.
Bowler, Kate. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. Oxford UP, 2013.
Gutierrez, Cathy. Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance. Oxford UP, 2009.
Peale, Norman V. The Power of Positive Thinking. Prentice-Hall, 1952.
Was Donald Trump’s election—twice—shaped by the ideological undercurrents of American metaphysical religion? If Norman Vincent Peale’s gospel of self-made success was more than New Thought-evangelical subculture but, as Catherine Albanese argues in The Delight Makers (2024), the fabric of American theology, then Trump’s political ethos—his relentless optimism, self-mastery rhetoric, and ‘Make America Great/Healthy Again’ paradigm—merits reexamination. This paper brings together Albanese’s Delight Makers and Republic of Mind and Spirit (2007), Cathy Gutierrez’s Plato’s Ghost (2009), and Kate Bowler’s Blessed (2013) to trace New Thought’s metaphysical endurance—from nineteenth-century spiritualists to Peale’s midcentury positive thinking through to Trump’s America. It asks whether the metaphysical tradition, fused with neoliberal market logic, has not just shaped the self-help genre but infused American politics with Albanese’s ‘theology of desire’—where ‘faith in belief’ functions as an operational gaze, a mechanism of control. This paper ultimately reconsiders how Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches myth remains a national creed.