The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

by George M. Marsden

"In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular, liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision-one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders. A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country's spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War. "--

Genres: History, Politics, American History, Religion, Cultural, Philosophy, Nonfiction

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He has written extensively on the interaction between Christianity and the American culture and has published numerous books, including Jonathan Edwards: A Life, which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize given for the best work of history. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is probably going to be one of my highlights of the year. It's a history book, but it's a history book that gives you stuff you might not find anywhere else. Marsden tells a simple story, but I haven't read anything this good on secularism since Littlejohn's The Promise and Peril of Christian Liberty. Marsden is to be commended for being a Christian calling against one of our biggest idols in a mature, scholarly, and careful fashion.

Marsden documents how the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite (WASPS) failed to provide intellectual leadership during the 50s and how they failed to anticipate the problems of the 1960s. Americans started consuming TV and pop culture and experiencing the malaise and dissatisfaction of a culture that was extremely consumeristic and extremely isolated and individualized. However, what did the elites call for? Autonomy and personal existentialism. Follow your heart. Don't submit to the conformist 1950s culture (at least not too much). Be yourself.

The most fascinating bit of the book that made me laugh, cry, and gasp was the middle section where he talked about the loss of natural law. Apparently, Walter Lippmann, a Jewish public intellectual, said that modern liberal culture failed because it had no sense of natural law or divine order in the universe. Secularism had abandoned the enlightenment principles that God had made the world as we found it, but still expected to reap all the cultural fruit. They also strictly relegated religion to the privatized sphere, even though they continued to praise its function in society. And when Lippmann pointed out the problem, that without an understanding of order, they had no reason for the notions of duty because we could remake ourselves into anything we wanted, the intellectuals all mocked him and considered him a heretic. They said his book was not the bold solution they wanted, and they rallied around the flag of pragmatism.

Another prophet who Marsden points to is Reinhold Niebhur, a liberal American theologian who nonetheless was pessimistic about two things in the 1950s consensus culture: science and individual autonomy. Niebhur attacked these two gods fearlessly, and got away with it in part because of his anti-communism (often attacks on these things could get you painted as anti-American). However, Marsden points out that Niebhur's criticism of America could not go anywhere because he rejected the Bible. Thus, his religion could have no objective purchase in the world of politics. I couldn't believe that he wrote that. It's probably the most potent critique of theological liberalism I have read in my life.

As I read this stuff, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. C.R. Wiley in his book The Household and the War for the Cosmos offers a brief but compelling narrative of how losing the idea of natural order is what has lead to our modern mess. C.S. Lewis does the same thing in That Hideous Strength. Reading the sources that Marsden brought up, it sounded like the public intellectuals read the scripts and just acted them out like robots. Public intellectuals and elites really believed that the same notions of decency and common sense could be maintained without any sense of order, design, or reverence for custom. The pluralism that had strengthened the nation during WWII by inviting immigrants into he American culture had undermined public discourse. Psychologists like B.F. Skinner wanted to go full hog NICE and start treating kids like animals, while Carl Rodgers wanted to set free the individual and let it do what was right in its own eyes. Both would initially appeal to science, but that confidence in science and reason would be quickly eroded by notions of cross-cultural relativism. It's easy to see how increasing technology, alienation, and social atomization would lead to these "common sense" ideas getting eroded and here we are with gays, abortion, transgender surgery, furries, et al.

And into this gap provided by the mainline denomination came the 1960s with their notions of autonomy and self-actualization (complete with libertinism) and the religious right, with leaders who actually addressed the culture, to some extent (examples that Marsden points to are Schaeffer and Graham). One of the more interesting things is that he talks about how Schaeffer did not want to address Roe v Wade on How Shall We Then Live because he initially thought it was a Catholic issue. He is nuanced on the differences between different evangelicals and shows that fundamentalism is often confused (half-militant Biblicism and half-militant classical liberalism) when the culture sees militancy.

In the conclusion to the book, Marsden offers some reflections on fundamentalism and cultural pluralism in America. I do not agree with all of Marsden's conclusions, and as an academic he is slightly harder on Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism than he needs to be (but he does get some great jabs in there--for instance, it' not hard to see the problems with David Barton's reading of Jefferson). He's more troubled than I am about continuing culture wars, and I am more nervous than he is about intellectuals being cultural leaders. However, he offers a careful and considerate critique of secularism and the idea that religion should have no relationship to politics. He calls for a public discourse that recognizes that religious beliefs are central, but that between Jews, Muslims, and even enlightenment thinkers, we can share a common intellectual foundation. He calls on Abraham Kuyper's theology to argue for a strong notion of common grace, and for respectful disagreement. It's a nice reminder of a virtue that, nowadays, we do not have much of, though I don't think we can afford to be naive about ill-willed political players.

Still, despite my disagreements, this was a profound and beautiful book that tackles tough questions and gave me a theological window into 1950s elite philosophy and into the tough questions relating to the place of religion and politics.

[Michael Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marsden accurately represents the historical rise in liberal Christianity during the 1950s. However, in the last few chapters of the book he begins to access the various Christian attempts to correct the course of American thought. Later, Marsden will make his own recommendations on how we should proceed. In his view, those who began to lose power and do not have the answer to liberalism are: white protestant men, WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), the anti-Catholic anti-Jewish sentiment (according to Marsden, a view held by the former WASPs), the strict "biblicists" with their Puritanical beliefs, the fundamentalists, and evangelicals. Who, in Marsden's thinking, has the answer to liberal Christianity and secularism then? Those who follow the Kuyperian view of religion and government today, namely, the evangelical left. The title of the last chapter and the last words of the book indicate where Marsden would recommend we go (with the help of journalists too), "towards an inclusive pluralism."

[Benjamin Glaser]

George Marsden is the preeminent religious historian of his generation. From a biography of Jonathan Edwards to various works concerning Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism writ large there is no question that if you want to understand the religious culture of America you cannot ignore Marsden’s work and this book is no different.
This particular work covers the post-WWII generation of American Protestantism; where it was, how it came to be, where it went, and what it is today. Marsden’s general thesis is that the collapse of the moderate/liberal, and it is important to understand that the author is not using “liberal” in either a theological or pejorative sense, but in a way that points toward the common religious consensus of middle America from the 1950’s to today, which as Marsden carefully and devastatingly explains has collapsed under the weight of its own lack of the Sensus divinitatis.
Using a basic chronological structure in each chapter he goes through the intellectual influence of men who at first glance may seem unrelated and really have not much to teach us about the Christian church. For instance Marsden spends much time interacting with Walter Lippmann, a jewish journalist, before entering into a discussion of B.F. Skinner and Carl Rogers’ psychoanalysis, both atheistic Psychologists. He carefully shows how each of these men, along with others like Dr. Spock (Benjamin, not the Vulcan) became the foundation of Religious instruction in the 1950’s in ways that pre-WWII Protestantism would have reacted strongly against, but post-WWII consensus building made them part and parcel of the mainline theological milieu. In other words the ministers of suburban Presbyterianism in 1960 would be more likely to draw from Bishop Fulton Sheen than Bishop J.C. Ryle.
If you grew up in mainline Protestantism of any stripe this work will illuminate a lot of things in the back of your mind that you knew to be true, yet did not know how to either explain or comprehend. Especially for those of us who found our theology far more influenced and grounded in the shifting sands of an ever malleable cultural acceptability than in the tradition of the Church*. The central reason the Seven Sisters have lost their influence is because their theologies were founded upon houses of straw built with a kind of pragmatism which could not withstand the thrashing winds of the 1960’s. They gave up their confessional birthright for a mess of country clubs, chamber of commerce floral groups, and a place at the political table which have proven to be perfect foils for the loss of a generation of Christian children to the wilds of Babylon and Egypt. Likewise the rise of the Religous Right saw a will to return to a “consensus” of Jude0-Christian ethics they saw in the 1950’s which ironically neither ever actually existed nor could be the basis of cultural recovery.
Marsden will close this book with an appeal to an inclusive pluralism which neither falls into the trap of secular humanism which seeks to rid the public square of all religious symbols or a Christian Right return to the mythical conservative Christianity which neither existed or is itself of a benefit to moving forward beneficially. He speaks very favorably of Abraham Kuyper in this section and points the reader back to his project in Holland as a type that should be emulated, with proper corrections, in these days. In my opinion this was the weakest part of the book. It was almost as if Marsden missed the point that he so wonderfully made in the previous chapters, that the post-war consensus built upon an ephemeral agreement cannot shoulder the weight either of culture or the larger program of the Church. A large part of the failure of the American experiment has been its refusal to recognize the reality that the people of God cannot serve two masters. We cannot accept secular psychology and non-Christian conceptions of world and life and think the Church can survive or flourish with such a holding of hands. I would rather we think long and hard about the Biblical consensus that we cannot live in Christ’s Kingdom with the ethics of Egypt if we hope to see the blessings of God upon our nation and our Church.
Highly Recommended.
*Tradition in its famous use by Jaroslav Peliken.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I always wonder what the ‘gay agenda’ is. The author uses that expression in his own voice while talking about somebody else but he does use that phrase. May you never have to live like we did in the 1950s, or shall we never have to ‘make America great again’ if it means having the stifling conforming ethos of the 50s as laid out in this book. This author does an adequate but overly familiar job of describing intellectual thought, books, movies and the assumptions we held in the 1950s (and 60s).

Time has already passed this book by. The author ultimately wants a plurality in the public sphere where all ideas are given equal credence. Even if the idea is that fairies live in my shoes and I think that we should regulate shoes because I have faith in ‘fairies in shoes’. I would hope that if I appeal to a separate ‘magisterial’ truth for my argument to hold sway that the public sphere would just ignore my argumentation and let me walk in puddles as I went merrily about my way.

Religion justifying itself in its own terms is becoming as passé as the existentialism that the author spoke about often in this book. The fastest growing religion today is ‘none of the above’, and that would not have been the case in 2014, when this book was originally published. ‘Secular Humanism’ is no longer an insult when it’s not accompanied by specificity of some kind.

The author said Hofstadter in his book ‘Anti-Intellectualism’ held Billy Graham in poor esteem. While Hofstadter may have thought of Billy Graham as an anti-intellectual in that book, when I read his book I felt Hofstadter was favorably disposed towards Graham (Graham is actually a creep, just listen to the Nixon tapes for confirmation). I won’t go back and re-read that book to find out for sure, but I would recommend Hofstadter’s 1963 book over this book. I felt that Hofstadter and this book make a mistake in the way they define intellectual. They should have defined it in terms of certainty: intellectuals have doubts with their truths, anti-intellectuals are certain. Intellectuals can be reasoned with and shown wrong with data, anti-intellectuals can’t. I think under my definition, this author himself is probably an anti-intellectual, because he advocates for his truths to be non-refutable.

The author does a yeoman’s job of describing the time period under consideration. He mentioned Betty Friedan’s book ‘Feminine Mystique’. She was wrong to compare being a housewife to death camps as this author alludes to, but this author misses the opportunity to tell us she was incredibly gifted in showing how the functional paradigms of the time period were false (‘most woman want to be housewives, since most women are housewives’, that’s a functional description that showed reality as it was, but Friedan was smart enough to realize that was not how it was necessarily the way it should be).

The author brings in Thomas Khun’s ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ as one of the most influential of the 1960s books and doesn’t like what it implies because in my opinion the author really doesn’t like a world that allows for relative truths and he believes the ‘truth is out there’ thus, for example, if his holy book tells him gays are an abomination and are deserving of hell and eternal damnation, there is no wiggle room and science can’t show him that people are born that way in the image of God and therefore are not worthy of earthly admonitions or after life damnation. Now, I want to be perfectly clear that is not my read on the author, but his arguments would lead in that direction if an inverted Christian Evangelical (I’m not saying all Christian Evangelical invert the words of the Gospels only 80% of them do, that means 20% do not and I tip my metaphorical hat to them) decides to spout that bilge and there would be no way to refute their pseudo-scientific non-falsifiable assertions under the paradigm of separate magisterial.

I don’t like the author’s plead for separate magisterial in knowledge. I felt this book offered very little new for me in 1950/60 thought, books or movies for which I was not already familiar with. As always, tell me something I don’t already know. Even though this book was originally published in 2014, time has passed it by. I did get it for free at Hoopla, and it’s readable at that price, but I would not recommend it otherwise unless you are totally unfamiliar with 1950/60s thought, movies and books, but if that is the case you by definition have had no interest in that time period previously, and you too can pass up on this book.

[Logan Maloney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is as dry as sourdough toast

[Mark Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perceptive, readable, fascinating. What really stuck out to me was that the intellectuals of the 1950s were facing the same dissolution of moral discourse that I believe we are facing in our generation—and for the same reasons. We're just further along the path of dissolution. Those who sounded the alarm in the 1950s (specifically Walter Lippmann) were pooh-poohed and ignored. But they were right: "the typical consensus outlooks of the time [the 1950s] can be understood as attempts to preserve the ideals of the American enlightenment while discarding its foundations." Those foundations are long gone. And Marsden gives a little attention at the end of the book to answering the question, "What can the righteous do?"

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a 4.5 to me, as I thought this was one of the better semi-popular intellectual histories I've ever come across. Marsden effectively and interestingly sketches out the main intellectual currents and personalities of the postwar liberal consensus era. It argues that the 1950s liberal public intellectual climate focused on a certain set of problems: mass culture and consumerism, the decline of the Protestant establishment, the feeling of anonymity and meaninglessness many people found in an age of abundance, and the purpose of the US as the world's undisputed superpower. This was a twilight phase in the sense that these thinkers (Schlesinger, Rysman, Niebuhr, others I can't remember right now) could assume that America still had a common cultural and intellectual reference point around the ideas of progress and science (Niebuhr excepted here, probably). They were progressive on race and gender but totally unprepared for the enormous intellectual/political assaults and disruptions of the 1960s. However, in a few ways, they also prepared that ground; for example, by increasingly emphasizing the importance of the individual human will and personality in the face of mass conformity.

My only beef with this book is the ending, which oddly skipped the 1960s and rushed straight into conservative/evangelical political mobilization in the 1970s. Marsden set up this compelling history of the consensus and then skipped over its collapse in the 1960s. I would have liked to see a slightly longer book with a few chapters on the 1960s.

This book is good for anyone who enjoys intellectual history and wants to know more about the major postwar figures. It is fairly accessible, although a working knowledge of postwar history is required.

[Kiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve not read a better accounting for the idyllic place the 1950s hold in the American Protestant imagination, and the influential sway that vision still has on conservative politics today. Marsden is a great historian whose added analysis serves a pastoral function to the believing reader sorting out the near total political hijacking of modern American faith. The history and contours of American culture wars are helpfully identified and explored. The major developments of each decade following the post war era include Supreme Court decisions against school prayer, for abortion, and a general type of secularization that diminished Protestant privilege. This was done in such a way as to stimulate the unified evangelical movement into a political force that, while using language that seems to point to America’s Puritan beginning, actually harkens to a post war secular America with Protestant privilege. Marsden compares the fractured modern Evangelical identity with the Kuyperian social model developed by theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper of the Netherlands at the turn of the 20th century. Marsden argues Kuyper’s foresight to cultivate a principled pluralism for a coming secular age was superior to the ideological enclaves formed by the American religious right. 6 hours or 264 pages of history, faith, and political science.

[Bruce Prescott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Marsden paints this picture with a very broad brush. Except for a footnote, Christian Reconstructionism, New Apostolic Reformation Dominionism, and Christian Nationalism are totally ignored. The racist roots of the Religious Right are ignored. In my opinion, he is utterly naive in regard to the threat to pluralistic democracy that would be posed by Kuyperian religiously defined political parties. I do not recommend this book.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relevant read for today, tracing the interaction of American religion to the larger society from the end of the Protestant consensus in the 1950's to the Moral Majority of the 80's. Ably names how and why American pluralism has been able to take seriously diversity of many kinds, except religion.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has long appreciated the divide between left and right, I found this book fascinating in its look at mainstream liberal culture at the peak of its dominance in postwar society and where everything fell apart.  Of particular interest, at least to me, was the fascinating mixture between the author's obvious desire to reduce the state of conflict that our contemporary society has found itself in and his intellectual honesty in exploring the tensions and contradictions that eventually destroyed the ruling liberal consensus in the United States that was related to a crisis of worldview.  A consensus worldview required a certain shared set of beliefs, and the liberals of the 1950s wanted to have a consensus that allowed them to ignore the demands for the voices of others to be heard that were outside of their own elite coterie, and in the absence of a firm commitment to the foundation of the principles of the founding, it was impossible for liberals to maintain their exclusivity while also maintaining their cultural power.  And so the liberal consensus was crushed in the turmoil that followed the 1950's, as we are the witnesses of.

The author has divided this particular examination of the 50's into six essays along with other material to frame it in a bit less than 200 pages.  After an introduction where the author loosely defines what he means the 50's, the author moves into a prologue where he examines the consensus answers to an exercise called "The National Purpose" that examined consensus liberals (including, intriguingly, Billy Graham) discussing the well-recognized problems that they saw in contemporary America.  After that the author discusses the relationship between mass media and the national character (1), with fears among an intellectual elite that they were not sufficiently able to encourage elevated culture for the ordinary American.  The author then explores the question of freedom in the lonely crowd (2) as well as the problem of enlightenment being without firm foundations and a commitment to lasting principles (3).  Then the problem of authority, the masters of church and state, rears its ugly head within liberal Christianity (4).  The author then looks at the latter days of the Protestant establishment and how it thought about itself and its own role in the days before it was wrecked on the shoals of history (5) and the problem of consensus becoming a fighting word rather than a reality (6), ending with the author's eloquent plea for a more inclusive pluralism.

Why did the liberal pluralism of the 1950's fail?  For one, it was not nearly pluralistic enough.  The thoughts of women as separate from men, of conservative Jews and Christians as opposed to liberals, of Southerners as opposed to Northerners, of blacks as opposed to whites, were not generally included within this consensus.  The shattering of the consensus when enough people were unwilling to accept social marginalization was almost inevitable, especially because the liberal consensus had hacked off its connection with a traditional morality and a defense of eternal principles that would have made their consensus worth defending.  The author' in describing the breakup of a uniform political legitimacy shows a desire for a more inclusive and broader pluralism to be built, but it is unclear on what grounds that can be built, or whether there is any political will on the part of people or institutions within this country to construct a pluralism that can contain democratic socialists and committed Christian reactionaries, between MAGA-hat wearing Trump supporters and complacent readers of the Washington Post and New York Times, between Muslims and Jews, between self-righteous Yankees and resentful Southrons.  I do not know if such a pluralism can be made, nor do I know if anyone is willing to attempt it.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Marsden’s The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (2014) is a penetrating analysis of the ideological and cultural shifts in mid-20th-century America, particularly as they relate to the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment. A distinguished historian of religion in American public life, Marsden argues that the dominant intellectual currents of the 1950s were deeply rooted in the secularized Enlightenment tradition, yet they were also increasingly incapable of addressing the profound cultural and moral challenges that emerged during that period. In his view, this failure contributed to the fracturing of a shared moral and intellectual framework in the United States, paving the way for the cultural fragmentation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.


Marsden’s central thesis is that the intellectual elites of the 1950s, despite their liberal commitments, inherited a worldview shaped by an attenuated version of Enlightenment rationalism that ultimately proved inadequate for maintaining a cohesive society. He argues that mid-century American thought was characterized by an attempt to balance democratic pluralism with a secular moral consensus, yet this consensus was fragile, as it lacked the deeper metaphysical and religious foundations that had historically undergirded American public life. Drawing on figures such as Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Bell, and Reinhold Niebuhr, Marsden illustrates how mainstream intellectuals of the time recognized the limitations of both unfettered individualism and rigid traditionalism but struggled to articulate an alternative moral and philosophical framework.


One of Marsden’s key insights is that the Enlightenment tradition in America was always selectively appropriated. While the founding generation emphasized reason and natural law, their worldview was still deeply shaped by religious commitments. By the 20th century, however, secular liberalism had jettisoned much of its religious inheritance while retaining a belief in individual rights, scientific rationalism, and democratic governance. Marsden argues that this partial secularization left liberal intellectuals ill-equipped to address the deeper existential and moral crises of the age. He critiques the assumption that a society can sustain shared moral norms without a more robust philosophical or religious grounding.


Marsden situates his argument within the broader historiography of American intellectual and cultural history. His work aligns with scholars who have examined the limitations of secular liberalism, such as Christopher Lasch and Alasdair MacIntyre, but he brings a distinctive historical perspective by focusing on the specific debates of the 1950s. He also engages with the literature on the Cold War era, particularly the tensions between liberal democratic ideals and the anxieties generated by mass society, technological change, and the rise of consumer culture.


One of the book’s strengths is its lucid exposition of key mid-century intellectual figures. Marsden provides insightful discussions of Hofstadter’s critique of anti-intellectualism, Bell’s analysis of ideological exhaustion, and Niebuhr’s theological realism. He also examines the sociological critiques of thinkers such as David Riesman and C. Wright Mills, who highlighted the conformist pressures of corporate and bureaucratic structures. These figures, Marsden argues, recognized the need for a stronger moral framework but were constrained by their commitment to secularism.


A particularly provocative aspect of Marsden’s argument is his proposal that a more inclusive role for religious traditions could have offered an alternative to the intellectual impasse of the 1950s. He suggests that the United States might have benefited from a pluralistic framework that acknowledged religious perspectives as legitimate contributors to public discourse, rather than relegating them to the private sphere. Drawing on his broader scholarship on religion and American public life, Marsden contends that a more explicitly theistic moral foundation could have provided the coherence that liberal secularism lacked. However, he stops short of advocating for a return to a single, dominant religious framework, instead calling for a form of pluralism that respects diverse traditions while recognizing their potential contributions to a shared moral vision.


While The Twilight of the American Enlightenment is a compelling and well-argued work, it is not without its limitations. Some readers may find Marsden’s critique of secular liberalism persuasive, but others might argue that he underestimates the ability of secular moral traditions to sustain a cohesive society. Philosophers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas have advanced sophisticated accounts of how democratic societies can maintain shared ethical commitments without relying on religious foundations, and Marsden does not fully engage with these perspectives. Additionally, while he makes a strong case for the limitations of 1950s liberalism, his alternative vision remains somewhat abstract. How exactly a more pluralistic engagement with religious traditions would have functioned in practice is left underdeveloped.


Nevertheless, Marsden’s work is an important contribution to the study of American intellectual history. His analysis sheds light on a crucial period of transition and offers a thought-provoking critique of the assumptions that have shaped modern American public life. For scholars interested in the intersections of religion, politics, and culture, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment provides a valuable framework for understanding the ideological shifts that have led to the contemporary crisis of liberal belief.


George Marsden’s The Twilight of the American Enlightenment is a nuanced and insightful examination of the intellectual currents of the 1950s and their implications for contemporary American society. His critique of secular liberalism and his call for a more pluralistic engagement with religious traditions offer a valuable perspective on the challenges of sustaining a cohesive moral and intellectual order. While some may debate the feasibility of his proposals, Marsden’s historical analysis is a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion about the role of religion and secularism in public life. His work is essential reading for historians, political theorists, and anyone interested in the enduring tensions between Enlightenment rationalism and religious tradition in American culture.

GPT

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are at all concerned about the fragmentation of our society, then you should read this book. It's lightly academic, but short and written with verve. Marsden buries the most arcane academic bits in the footnotes or banishes them altogether. Marsden is nuanced and so his assessment of the roots of the culture wars and our constant face-planting in dealing with pluralism is refreshing. He accomplishes:

1. Sound analysis of the core of the cultural changes of the midcentury (post-WWII to the late 1970s). "Consensus" culture gets charged with Enlightenment overconfidence in universal human reason (as does our continued valorization of individual fulfillment as the highest possible goal, which itself smacks of Enlightenment thinking).
2. Uniquely contributes to our understanding of the rise of the Religious Right by the late 1970s by viewing it in the context of the failure of the midcentury liberal-moderate consensus culture.
3. Argues convincingly that the liberal-moderate consensus and its left-leaning heirs and the Religious Right/more conservative backlash to the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s all failed to provide any viable grounds for dealing with increasing pluralism, especially religious pluralism. (I would go further to argue, with 7 more years of time having passed since this book came out, that this is part of what drove evangelicals to such frustration, anger, and contempt in 2016 and has sustained those politics of contempt thru 2020/early 2021).

His recommendation is essentially a "principled pluralism:" taking seriously diversity, especially easily-excluded religious diversity, but then seeking to find our common ground. He uses Abraham Kuyper (somewhat awkwardly or offensively) as his launch pad for such recommendations, which could furnish another book, and so are not terrifically detailed in this volume.

My primary gripe with the book is that race is mostly excluded as a category of American life, intellectual wrangling, and political construction. Marsden acknowledges racial diversity and the civil rights movement as a major impetus in the breakdown of the "consensus" culture of the midcentury, but doesn't really account for how this was so. Surely his interlocutors (public intellectuals, the limitations of which are acknowledged as he discusses his sources up front) had something to say about race, civil rights, and social justice, and if they didn't, that would be telling too. I think it's easy to make this criticism now, but other scholars (Randall Balmer especially) have been pointing out that the racial politics of the Religious Right were more important than the leaders of that movement would have us believe. Slippery and overt white supremacy is a bigger pile of TNT in forging a healthy pluralistic democracy than Marsden was able to see in 2014.

[Flynn Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sincerely think that this work provides the best diagnosis for coming to terms both with America's inescapable political paradoxes as well as evangelical and liberal Protestantism's difficulties in substantively relating to the modern age. Marsden masterfully traces how the pluralistic eschaton promised by the mid-twentieth century intelligentsia could not ensure without the prescriptions and principles of the American founding, and their inevitable vitiating has led to the current chaotic discourse. His proposed antidote of a renewed Kuyperianism is sustainable if a bit unexpected, but his historical analysis overall is still unmatched.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insider's outsider view of America's relationship with religion. I don't agree with everything but I appreciated that even though he is a Christian, he has views on religion in the public sphere beyond the standard argumentation employed by right-leaning Evangelicals. His recommendation of some thinkers to follow up with will be a consideration for me.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this short history of the 1950s, George Marsden examines how the "liberal consensus" began to evaporate. He spends the majority of the book investigating and summarizing the key books and their authors that shaped and re-shaped public consciousness, such as "The Lonely Crowd," "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care," B.F. Skinner, Henry Luce and Walter Lippman and the philosophical frameworks these figures worked with, especially natural law and pragmatism. Chapter 5 details the ending of the Protestant Establishment and here Reinhold Niebuhr is the central figure. The sixth and final chapter is the most prescriptive as Marsden chronicles the rise of the Religious Right and champions Abraham Kuyper's "principled pluralism" as the framework for going forward in public discourse, a framework that is inclusive both of secular and religious viewpoints and that insists reason and science are not as neutral or objective as many have claimed (the secular-religious dichotomy is so often brought up but I am more curious as to how Christians and secularists would interact with exotic religious viewpoints; would either REALLY be hospitable to Hinduism influencing public policy?). All in all, a brief work that helpfully distills the changing mindset(s) of the 1950s and how these changes lay the foundation for far more cataclysmic shifts in the 1960s and onward.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful. Fair. Challenging.

In terms of cultural analysis, it was fascinating to read a book about the 50's and find that many of the issues have remained the same or only worsened over time. I have struggled with these very same ideas: that of balancing my own deeply held convictions with a respect for the beliefs and values of others, and how that to legitimately maintain the kind of "inclusive pluralism" that Marsden argues for in the public square. Marsden offers a valuable and fair analysis of culture from a Protestant perspective, as well as a viable option for becoming a more inclusive society. There is much work to be done, as Marsden well knows, but this is a start for exploring the reasons we have gotten to this point in our society and possible solutions. It is a needed book because all too often we negate or neglect certain opinions simply because we disagree with them, rather than giving them a fair hearing or considering them on their own terms.

Also, the references to the Soviet Union and comparisons with the U.S. are quite intriguing. And the footnotes! I love a book that sends me to find more books exploring topics of interest.

[Paul D. Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marsden, one of the leading historians of American religion, offers this cri de coeur for greater respect and tolerance for religious pluralism in the public sphere. This short book is a concise intellectual hiistory of American elites in the 1950s; an argument for why their attempt at an informal establishment of generic Protestantism failed; how secularism as an ideology has also failed; an account of the rise of the religious right, and its failure; and a plea for greater understanding and tolerance all around. It is a lot of ground to cover in a very short book. At times, the ideas come fast and furious. But Marsden is in such command of this material that he manages to be persuasive both in his historical account and overall argument. Alas, he may be too optimistic about our ability to just get along.

[Adam Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short Review: Books like this remind me of the importance of good history. The thesis is that the upheavals of the 1960s were predicted by the cracks in the foundation of American cultural hegemony. The intellectuals of the 1950s were transitioning into a post-modern world (which has taken 50 years to really filter down to culture). That transition prevented the intellectuals from charting a focused common path for the United States which a culture of progress wanted from the cultural elite. So the cracks in the White Protestant cultural dominance started which led to the more radical breakdowns of culture in the 1960s and 1970s.


My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/twilight-of-american...

[Matt Pitts · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to know what the 1950s were really like, or why conservative Christians and secularists can't seem to 'tolerate' each other, you will find here excellent food for thought. Marsden is a perceptive historian who in this book focuses not on events but ideas and assumptions that help explain the last sixty years of public life. His suggestion for a way forward, while not fleshed out in detail, is at least fresh (though not strictly new) and thought provoking. I hope this work receives a wide hearing from people all across the spectrum.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fine book from a very fine scholar. Started a little slow but got better and better as the book went along. Chapters 5 & 6 were especially strong. And I am hopeful that his hopes in the conclusion for a more inclusive pluralism beyond the culture wars will be realized -- and I hope evangelicals, in particular, lead the way!

[Geoffrey Kabaservice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's my review for the University Bookman:

http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/b...

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, focused, and insightful intellectual and cultural history of the 20th century. Marsden knows his subject and writes like master.

[Jon Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

George Marsden’s The Twilight of the American Enlightenment serves as a helpful survey of American social thought from the end of the second world war through the present. While the 1950s were a time of prosperity and stability, many public intellectuals knew this situation was only temporary. The rise of religious pluralism and modernity were already creating angst.

Walter Lippman’s solution was to ground society upon the immovable foundation of natural law. This, Lippman thought, would save liberal principles for future generations. Lippman became largely rejected and ridiculed for his belief in transcendent truth. The intellectual’s solution was instead to be found in Arthur Schlesinger and Daniel Bell’s “balanced,” approach. Democracy would ensure that government furthered goals in the best interest of mankind’s progress. Many problems could be addressed by science, and even those that could not would be examined on a case-by-case basis by the intelligentsia. As a result, specialization trumped tradition and the power centers of the culture took a secular swing toward the “experts.” Religion’s place was relegated to a private sphere in which it could never affect consensus.

The obvious backlash came in the 1970s when the “religious right” mobilized politically against national moral decay. Marsden, I believe, makes a mistake here however. In Marsden’s view, “consensus” liberals were unbalanced by seeing American principles as exclusively spawning from the Enlightenment, to the exclusion of Christianity. Similarly, conservative Christians emphasized Christian principles to the exclusion of the Enlightenment. What little citation he does offer in favor of the latter point is fairly weak. His own assumptions about the founding seem to overemphasize the influence of deism and the role of the Enlightenment.

Even so, Marsden finds in the example of Abraham Kuyper a proposed compromise between the two parties. “Principled pluralism,” which rests on the idea of “common grace,” could allow for fundamental disagreements, while retaining freedom in diverse communities. What Marsden misses, I believe, is that federalism has already been tried and failed. In a country in which a war was already waged in order to keep sovereign states under the dictates of a central government, it seems naive to think that a federal system such as “principled pluralism” could even work. More and more the central authority invades the personal lives of individuals and groups. The major tenants of the Bill of Rights itself are constantly up for debate. In this climate, how could anyone propose a political situation in which biblical conservatives are allowed to continue their influence so long as they do not interfere with the rights of differing communities? Modern liberalism will not even entertain Marsden’s possibility.

The book lead me to conclude that there are no good and practical answers short of a revival. This I believe is helpful, though it was not the point Marsden was making. It causes me to want to focus significant attention on spiritual awakening realizing that my political involvement is a rear-guard action for the glory of God and not the success of the action itself. Still, the information included in the survey of social thought is good. To gain an understanding in what lead the America of the 1950s to the America of today, I would recommend Marsden’s book.

[David Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief by George M. Marsden

Sunday, July 30, 2017
9:39 PM

This was an excellent little book. Marsden provides a perceptive, acute survey of the intellectual leaders in America during the 1950s. He writes with a view to pointing toward a more viable kind of pluralism than those urged by secular liberals and by evangelical Protestants. I especially cherished this book for its close look at the authors from this era, many of which set the kind of intellectual background in place that I grew up disporting myself within. For example, although I have not read Eric Fromm's Escape From Freedom, it often crossed my path and I was reminded that I had not read it while I had read The Dark Knight series. Marsden astute and pointed treatment of the various authors helped me to gain more insight into them and flesh out some of the shadows on the wall. In some cases he lit up my eros for certain books that had fallen dormant within me. For instance, I am much more likely to read William Barrett's Irrational Man after hearing Marsden's treatment of the book. I also was affirmed and propelled in my love for the works of Reinhold Niebuhr. Some of the people's thought that he scrutinized included Martin Luther King Jr, Reinhold Niebuhr, Carl Rogers, B.F. Skinner, Daniel Bell, Betty Friedan, David Riesman, Walter Lippman, Archibald MacLeish,
This book was more valuable because of the limited scope of time he covered. While some look back to the 1950s wistfully as a kind of golden age in comparison to the problems we have now, Marsden showed by his analyses that there was already a haunting sense of emptiness and unease in Zion, so to speak, that set the stage for the 1960s.
I think I enjoyed Marsden historical survey with its many attendant insights more than I found his thesis persuasive, although on broad general lines he is surely right to promote a pluralism similar to that of Abraham Kuyper in Holland, at least in principle. We can't go back to an WASP establishment and shouldn't seek to, nor should we be content with the empty pluralism of homogenous, uniformitarian democratic liberalism. I think I read the book he recommends at the end about Abraham Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction by Richard Mouw.

[Matthew Garringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marsden is at his best when he analyzes and critiques Evangelical thought and motivation, which is on display in the latter part of the book. Overall, I found his thesis in the first part of the book compelling. As someone who is not well read on the mid twentieth century intelligentsia, I was able to follow Marsden’s main posts, albeit with difficulty. There were a few times when I got lost in the weeds, but he does a good job of showing how the intellectual leaders of the fifties and sixties did little to prepare America for the fracturing it experienced in the following decades.

My favorite part was the conclusion, wherein he advocated for a Kuyperian view of a pluralist society. A society where all can have their honest convictions, yet strive to include and listen to all others. I believe his assessment that the overly secular left and the culture warring right do not have room for a true pluralism is correct. We need to transcend the arbitrary polarity of our current political and cultural moment to truly live alongside each other in peace. Marsden makes a beautiful case for how a Christian vision of politics and society can achieve this.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marsden gives some good intellectual background on the 50s, suggesting how what we remember as a culture of conformity came about and giving a helpful philosophic grounding for its presuppositions. He also shows how the religious tendencies of that era have shifted in unexpected ways, especially politically, and gives some thoughts as to how we can try, as a society, to work toward real pluralism, ie, toward a stance that will take religious commitments seriously while also affirming the (enlightenment tradition) generalized common good as being a realistic starting point for shared discussion.
If that sounds anticlimactic, it kind of is. But the picture Marsden constructs of people rigorously fighting a battle whose rules are going to change in the near future is interesting and sobering. If you have strong feelings about Abraham Kuyper, Reinhold Neibuhr, Billy Graham or the phenomenon of the Religious Right (which this book confirms as a historically bizarre conglomeration), you should take a look at this book.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fine. But it didn't say anything that hasn't been said a hundred times in a hundred different places. The 50s were great and then everything fell apart. No offense but it's getting really boring hearing about baby boomers ad nauseum. We're trapped in perpetually discussing their issues and hang ups and faults.

In fact this book said even less than ross douthat's "bad religion," and the conclusion was far less interesting. Basically boiled down to "academia should lead the way in showing how a diversity of views can peacefully exist and even interact with one another," which is a hilarious thought in 2021.

Id recommend skipping this one and reading Kenneth Woodward's "Getting Religion."

[Marc Sims · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short academic piece of history on how pivotal the 1950's were in creating the landscape in America we have now inherited. I lost interest a couple of times, but pushed through. I found his insights on the damaging effects of mass culture or pop culture really interesting (the creation of mass-market culture like TV sitcoms, pop music, etc. play a part in erasing individual identity). Further, his arguments about our blind faith in science and progress turned into a kind of scientism that never delivered on its promises of utopianism, but left us extremely dependent on technology, technique, and hyper-specific experts to tell us "how to" live. His conclusion on using Abraham Kuyper as a model for pluralistic engagement made me interested in studying Kuyper more.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a good intellectual history of post-World War II United States. I appreciate Marsden's expertise in American Protestant history and think he writes something here that really speaks to our present moment. I had some minor issues and missed chances but nothing that really resonates now as I have finished it. Chapter Six "Consensus Becomes a Fighting Word" was specifically well-aimed at our present historical moment.
This is a very thoughtful text and one I look forward to revisiting in the future.