In The Varieties of Religious Experience, originally delivered as the “Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion” at the University of Edinburgh just over a century ago—and published, to great acclaim, in 1902—William James distinguished two types of judgment he thought appropriate for the study of religion. The first, which he termed “the existential judgment,” concerned the origins, history, and nature of religion; the second, which he defined as “a spiritual judgment,” dealt with the meaning and significance of religious phenomena. Though the first sort of judgment, dwelling on historical facts, might be necessary, its ultimate usefulness was questionable; it couldn’t serve by itself as “a guide to life” nor could it offer any “value for purposes of revelation.” Thus, in applying the first judgment to the Bible, that scripture “would probably fare ill,” he noted, for considered purely as an historical document, its all-too-human errors and biases would become painfully apparent. But if spiritual judgment were brought into play, then the fact that the Bible represents “a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate” would dispose us more freely to grant it revelatory power.

I invoke these distinctions not only because William James—along with Emerson and Whitman—represents one of the tutelary spirits presiding over American Religious Poemsbut, more to the point, because his spiritual judgment of the true worth of scripture, though inadequate when applied to the Bible itself, does provide an apt touchstone for the appraisal of