About the Contributor(s): Cordell Strug studied philosophy at Purdue University but spent most of his life as a Lutheran pastor (LCA and ELCA). He has written on philosophy, religion, literature, and film; he is the author of Lament of an Audience on the Death of an Artist.

William James was a great-hearted and generous philosophical spirit. He was also--beneath his human sympathy, his experiments, his scholarship, and his captivating writings--a religious seeker, a pilgrim looking for a new Jerusalem he was ready to define for himself. Cordell Strug, as a young philosophy student, was enthralled by James, especially by his lectures on religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience. He was drawn by the alternative James offered to religious traditions, by his passionate searching, and by his rich humanity. Yet he found he had to part company with James on the...