Heinrich Detering: Thomas Manns amerikanische Religion: Theologie, Politik und Literatur im kalifornischen Exil.

• Tom Nolan

This book tells the story of a happy convergence of hearts and minds. On the one hand we have Thomas Mann, a lifelong pilgrim from nihilism and pessimism towards a positive, though undogmatic, spiritual credo. On the other hand we have the Unitarian Church as represented by two successive Los Angeles pastors, Ernest Caldecott and Stephen Fritschman. Taking its lead from these two guiding lights, with their emphasis on the supreme importance of human well-being, Los Angeles Unitarianism had, by the late 1930s, come to occupy a religious position at least superficially similar to Mann’s own, though by the opposite route – evolving from a sect reliant on holy authority into a heterogeneous congregation of progressives whose differing supernatural beliefs leading Unitarians were happy to include in the fold.