A Spiritual Person

When asked in a questionnaire to describe a spiritual person, William James named one instead: Phillips Brooks. This article focuses on Brooks—his life, his sermons, and his poem “O Little Town of Bethlehem”—to make the case that he exemplified James’ view of spirituality as “a susceptibility to ideals, but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about them.” It also supports Belzen’s (Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 12:205–222, 2009) view that there is no spirituality in general but only individual manifestations of it, a point that James’ nomination of Brooks implicitly supports.