In his comprehensive study of nineteenth-century theological controversies concerning eternal punishment and the future life Geoffrey Rowell offers a brief word concerning spiritualism:

In spite of Rowell's scathing comments, this chapter explores precisely ‘the picture of the future life’ presented by spiritualism, offering a systematic account of the ideas and imagery used to imagine the afterlife by both alleged spirits and spiritualists. Such an account is necessary because, as has been said, historians of spiritualism have shown little concern for these ideas and images until now.

The previous chapter demonstrated how spiritualism became a part of people's lives, regardless of their class, gender or geographical location. The different expressions of spiritualism, the quiet home experiments, theatrical séances, earnest accounts in spiritualist journals, along with the lectures, books and newspaper articles, brought people of all types into contact with its discourse. As a consequence, the ideas of spiritualism – its claims and beliefs – and the images of spiritualism – the rich pictorial language it employed – were communicated to an audience far wider than merely those who claimed to be convinced by spiritualism, or who called themselves ‘spiritualists’. Thus, however ‘banal’ they may be judged to be, these ideas and images are nevertheless of great significance to any account of spiritualism.

Spiritualists certainly thought they were important. Indeed, as one nineteenth-century adherent pointed out, spiritualism was more than simply ‘spirit-rapping’; it was more than the sum of its séance phenomena. Calling spiritualists ‘spirit-rappers’ was, he argued, like calling Christians ‘water-dippers’ because they practised baptism.