Fort Worth has always been proud of being a deeply religious community going back to the beginning of the 20th century when we styled ourselves “a city of churches.” Catholics, Protestants, and Jewish people all rubbed elbows and with those who held more esoteric beliefs. Perhaps the most esoteric belief to take root in Fort Worth, coming at the end of the 19th century, was the National Spiritualist Church.
It grew out of the Spiritualist movement that began with the Fox sisters in New York in 1848. A pair of sisters gained notoriety by supposedly communicating with the spirit world. General interest in their demonstrations took off with the coming of the Civil War because so many grieving Americans who lost loved ones wanted to reach out to the dearly departed.
After the Civil War the public’s interest in Spiritualism continued to grow despite determined efforts to debunk the movement. It transformed itself into a religious sect whose true believers accepted its principles without question. By 1885, there were an estimated 5 million professed believers in the United States…