The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912 Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent

Abstract

In this volume Thomas A. Tweed invites readers to enter a sophisticated universe of American discourse among later Victorians who criticized Buddhism, sympathized with it, or even converted to it. He explores with care and thoroughness a conversation which, if over now, is still of more than antiquarian interest. Tweed's American Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers tell us significant things about the late Victorian culture they shared with mainline Protestants and others. For the Americans who turned to Buddhism make it clear that, even in the nineteenth century, turning east did not signal complete alienation. In a study that concentrates our attention on processes of cultural contact more than on complexities of the Buddhist tradition, Tweed's protagonists are Euro-American Buddhists and others attracted by this Asian religion. The chronological focus is the second half of the nineteenth century. There Tweed documents a case that illuminates the limits of religious dissent and the extent of cultural consent in American society. In doing so, he refines the argument of R. Laurence Moore (Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans) regarding outsiders and insiders in American religious and cultural history-giving us a picture of "outsiders" who are not really that at all. Tweed shows us people with a family quarrel about aspects of American culture. These people turn to an "exotic" Eastern religion only insofar as it affirms certain basic American values. Thus, by looking at the values these Buddhists and kindred spirits affirm-theism, individualism, optimism, activism-Tweed's study casts indirect light on the cultural mainstream. In fact, it thereby confirms what others have told us about American society in the Victorian era. Tweed's close analysis of one discourse community (to use his language), despite the small numbers involved in it, provides insights about the dominant concerns and assumptions of the time. More than that, Tweed improves our understanding of the contact process between Eastern and Western thought, demonstrating clearly that it was not simply New England intellectuals or romantics who were attracted to Buddhism in America. In his examination of the reception accorded this Asian religion by Americans, we encounter critics, scholars, travelers, and converts scattered throughout the United States and representing more than one class of people. Tweed makes creative use of diverse evidence to substantiate this fact, sifting through old journals to gain a sense of audience, reading Victorian Buddhist periodicals for names, and examining private correspondence. By these means he is able to establish the existence of a flourishing religiocultural network. To aid his analysis, Tweed constructs a typology of Buddhist adherents and sympathizers that comprises three categories-esoterics, rationalists, and romantics. He shows the diverse ways in which these different groups of dissenting Victorians embodied American values and the prevailing assumptions of Anglo-Protestant Victorian culture. Some Americans, for example, were primarily impressed with what they saw as Buddhism's compatibility with science and with its relative tolerance as compared with Western faiths. Others expressed sympathy for the "intellectual landscape" of the Eastern worldview, found meaningful parallels between the Buddha and Jesus, or pointed to the ethical dimensions in both Buddhism and Christianity. Still others recognized a "Protestant" quality to both faiths. These varying responses to and interpretations of Buddhism reveal the complexity of cultural contact; they suggest both why some Americans were attracted to Buddhism and why the actual adherents were so few in number. Among those drawn to Buddhism in the late nineteenth century were the spiritually disillusioned as well as the curious. Many adherents and sympathizers also explored other religious options available at the time, including Theosophy and Spiritualism. Although dissenters of various stripes, these Americans were unable to reject completely the dominant cultural beliefs and values. According to Tweed, the individuals who were part of this complex pattern of dissent and consent were able to give up more easily the ideas of a personal creator and of a substantial, immortal self than their commitments to individualism, optimism, and activism. Tweed's discovery of this significant fact challenges us to examine other dissenting American religious communities to see to what extent they, too, involve reciprocal relations with or mirror the values of the dominant culture.