NEW BOOK ABOUT CASSADAGA OFFERS INSIGHTS INTO SPIRITUALITY

Search Features Requests Orders Meet the Press

NEW BOOK ABOUT CASSADAGA

OFFERS INSIGHTS INTO SPIRITUALITY

Gainesville -- The first comprehensive book about Cassadaga, the small Florida town established a century ago on religious principles, especially the tenant of continuous life (the idea that spirits of the dead commune with the living), will be celebrated at facilities of Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp throughout the day on Sunday, April 16.

Cassadaga: The South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community, scheduled for release one week from today (April 3) by University Press of Florida, examines the Camp’s history, people, cultural environment, and religious system. According to the book’s editors, Cassadaga offers new insights for those interested in leading a more spiritual life, and includes information that ranges from New Age interests to séances to larger trends in contemporary American religious culture.

The reception and book signing, held at the Andrew Jackson Davis Building (the Camp meeting hall and bookstore), 1112 Stevens Street, will begin at 12:30 p.m.

The Spiritualist Camp is located on 55 acres within the township of Cassadaga, a quaint Victorian village near DeLand, and was designated a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It remains the oldest active Spiritualist community in the South.

Visitors to Cassadaga also will be welcome to participate in the preceding church service, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. in Colby Memorial Temple, and in the Afternoon Message Service that takes place immediately after. Called mini-readings, the Message Service consists of two- to three-minute-long "spirit greetings" offered by Camp mediums and student mediums. Both events are open to the public at all times.

Coeditors Phillip Charles Lucas of Stetson University in DeLand and Gary Monroe of Daytona Beach Community College and several of the contributors to the anthology will be available to autograph books.

Following the reception, Sidney P. Johnston, author of the chapter on Cassadaga’s historic architecture, will lead a short walking tour of the town’s tree-lined streets. Johnston, who operates a historic preservation and consulting business in DeLand, and other contributors also will be available to discuss their research, a seven-year project funded in part by the Florida Humanities Council.

Writing about the book prior to publication, Ann Braude, director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard University Divinity School, commented, "The contributors to this volume invite us to explore this unexpected religious community from a combination of perspectives as revelatory as their subject matter. . . . Their Cassadaga is at once surprising and familiar. To travel with them to Cassadaga is not only to travel back in time but also to see how America’s past is present in its most modern religious developments. At Cassadaga the New Age does not appear as a foreign element on America’s religious landscape but rather as a domestic product that is as American as the Bible Belt and as deeply rooted in our national religious longings."

Photographs from the book that feature Camp activities as well as the town’s distinctive architecture and some of its residents will be on display at the meeting hall. The work of Monroe, professor of art at DBCCs Center for Photographic Studies, the images are part of a project to create a visual record of Cassadaga that he began shortly before the Camp’s centennial in 1994. Refreshments will be served following the book signing.

Please address requests for review copies of Cassadaga in writing to:

University Press of Florida Publicity Department
15 NW 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611

or Fax (352) 392 - 7302

Cassadaga is midway between Orlando and Daytona Beach, accessed off I-4 from exit 54.
Take Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beltway a short distance to Cassadaga Road (C.R. 4139); the Camp is on the right.

IMPORTANT! Television crews must request permission in advance to film events at the Camp.
Please contact the Camp office at (904) 228 - 3171.