Let the dead speak explores the historical and social dynamics of Spiritualism, a religion that is associated in the popular imagination with nineteenth-century parlour séances yet continues to be practiced today in Australia, the UK, and USA.
The authors draw on deep fieldwork experience, interviews, and archival research to analyse Spiritualism's energetic resilience and the enduring popular appeal of mediumship. Three arguments shape the book. The first is that the scholarly study of 'belief' needs to be seen in a new light as the conjunction of claims to truth with commitments to institutions making those claims. The second is that women have decisively shaped Spiritualism's religious and political profile throughout its history. The third is that Australian Spiritualism is a distinct variant of a transnational Anglophone family of ritual practice, one including vibrant churches in the UK and USA. The uniqueness of
Let the dead speak lies in its interdisciplinary approach and its focus on the lively present of a movement popularly associated with the past. This is the only book to examine Spiritualism fully across cultural and historical contexts.
The authors show how Spiritualist resilience follows a wave pattern rather than a decline-and-fall arc, and they foreground Spiritualists' own voices to offer a critically sympathetic account of how modern Spiritualism is practiced.
