“Given on Spiritual Authority”: Revelatory Tensions in Spiritualist Alternative Gospels

This paper discusses three largely forgotten alternative gospels presented by nineteenth-century American Spiritualists. While Spiritualists often reinterpreted the Bible in unorthodox ways and supplemented it with or subordinated it to spirit communications, these new gospels were intended to supplant the canonical accounts, rationalizing them and making them conform to democratic ideals. All three accounts naturalize Jesus's miracles and fiercely attack priestcraft, authorizing Spiritualist understandings of true religion. These alternative gospels reveal tensions at the heart of Spiritualism and reflect anxieties about biblical historicity, scientific materialism, charismatic authority, and ongoing revelation. Dependent on the canonical gospels even as they sought to displace them, these gospels expose the paradox of an anti-authoritarian religious movement operating within a deeply biblicist culture. Through these neglected works, the paper illuminates the tensions that shaped Spiritualist engagements with scripture and, more broadly, the contested place of the Bible in nineteenth-century American religious life.