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An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America
We live in a profoundly spiritual age--but in a very strange way, different from every other moment of our history. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand on the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light.
Or so Joseph Bottum argues in An Anxious Age , an account of modern America as a morality tale, formed by its spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty the collapse of the Mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life.
Updating The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , Max Weber's sociological classic, An Anxious Age undertakes two case studies in contemporary social class, adrift in a nation without the religious understandings that gave it meaning. Looking at the college-educated elite he calls "The Poster Children," Bottum sees the post-Protestant heirs of the old Mainline Protestant domination of dutiful descendants who claim the high social position of their Christian ancestors even while they reject their ancestors' Christianity. Turning to "The Swallows of Capistrano," the Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II, Bottum evaluates the early victories--and later defeats--of the attempt to substitute Catholicism for the dying Mainline voice in public life.
Sweeping across American intellectual and cultural history, An Anxious Age traces the course of national religion and warns about the strange angels and even stranger demons with which we now wrestle. Insightful and contrarian, wise and unexpected, An Anxious Age ranks among the great modern accounts of American culture.
Praise for Joseph Bottum and An Anxious Age :
" An Anxious Age is bound to be viewed as a classic of American sociology--not only because of its vast knowledge of historical facts and personalities, its depth and multiple layers of meaning, but also because of its literary elegance and imaginative structure. Bottum offers a wholly new way of understanding religion in public life today. The magical trick Bottum works when he asks 'Where did the Protestant ethic go?' is nearly breathtaking." --Michael Novak
"A poet and critic and essayist with a sideline in history and philosophy," Joseph Bottum is attempting "to wrench the true complexity of faith back from the complexity-destroying context of contemporary political debates." -- New York Times
"Joseph Bottum is the poetic voice of modern Catholic intellectual life. His work . . . shaped the minds of a generation." -- National Review
"One of America's most gifted writers, with a perfect ear and a matchless style." -- Andrew Ferguson
"A fierce critical intelligence and a terrific sense of the comedy of errors we call the human condition." -- Paul Mariani
Or so Joseph Bottum argues in An Anxious Age , an account of modern America as a morality tale, formed by its spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty the collapse of the Mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life.
Updating The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , Max Weber's sociological classic, An Anxious Age undertakes two case studies in contemporary social class, adrift in a nation without the religious understandings that gave it meaning. Looking at the college-educated elite he calls "The Poster Children," Bottum sees the post-Protestant heirs of the old Mainline Protestant domination of dutiful descendants who claim the high social position of their Christian ancestors even while they reject their ancestors' Christianity. Turning to "The Swallows of Capistrano," the Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II, Bottum evaluates the early victories--and later defeats--of the attempt to substitute Catholicism for the dying Mainline voice in public life.
Sweeping across American intellectual and cultural history, An Anxious Age traces the course of national religion and warns about the strange angels and even stranger demons with which we now wrestle. Insightful and contrarian, wise and unexpected, An Anxious Age ranks among the great modern accounts of American culture.
Praise for Joseph Bottum and An Anxious Age :
" An Anxious Age is bound to be viewed as a classic of American sociology--not only because of its vast knowledge of historical facts and personalities, its depth and multiple layers of meaning, but also because of its literary elegance and imaginative structure. Bottum offers a wholly new way of understanding religion in public life today. The magical trick Bottum works when he asks 'Where did the Protestant ethic go?' is nearly breathtaking." --Michael Novak
"A poet and critic and essayist with a sideline in history and philosophy," Joseph Bottum is attempting "to wrench the true complexity of faith back from the complexity-destroying context of contemporary political debates." -- New York Times
"Joseph Bottum is the poetic voice of modern Catholic intellectual life. His work . . . shaped the minds of a generation." -- National Review
"One of America's most gifted writers, with a perfect ear and a matchless style." -- Andrew Ferguson
"A fierce critical intelligence and a terrific sense of the comedy of errors we call the human condition." -- Paul Mariani
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 16, 2010
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November 7, 2020
The power of mainstream American liberal culture manifests in its ability to portray itself as more or less the natural order of things, free of historical forces and ranging towards the lofty title of common sense. A great service that Joseph Bottum provides here is to demystify this culture a bit: identifying it as an offspring of the Mainline Protestantism that once defined the country. The collapse of the Mainline, as he argues, is the fundamental event in American history over the past century. Fired by the popularity of the "social gospel" movement founded by Walter Rauschenbaush (Richard Rorty's grandfather), the actual theology of Protestantism went "up into the air" over the past few generations, while the spiritual energies of its former adherents coalesced around opposition to the major social evils that Rauschenbaush identified: bigotry, power, corruption, the groupthink of the vulgar mob and class oppression. These were the same forces traditionally believed by Christians to have conspired in the murder of Jesus Christ. The social gospel maintained the deep spiritual opposition to these things, while jettisoning Jesus and theology from the story. Thus we were given American liberal civic religion.
People have not lost the desire for salvation, even after they have, theoretically at least, cut the cords of metaphysical belief that previously bound them. Today salvation is believed to be tied to holding the correct idea of social ills, roughly the ones that Rauschenbaush articulated with a few new ones likely tacked on today. Acting against the ills is of course nice but the most important thing is to oppose them deeply in your heart. This civic religion transfers its metaphysical hopes onto an earthly redemption that frees the world from these social evils. An anguished spiritual cry, inarticulate, righteous, and deeply good in its fury against sin and the Kingdom of Evil that continues to exist despite our recognition of it. In doing so the social gospel gradually cut away the earthy stuff of birth and death that religion used to be mainly concerned with, leaving a purely "social" outlook. This has always sat a bit strangely with me and probably prevented me from blindly embracing such a worldview.
Religion is not gone and never truly goes away. America has been deeply Protestant since the first settlers arrived on its shores and remains a Protestant nation today even if its post-Protestant mainstream scarcely thinks of itself that way. In the void opened up by the collapse of the Mainline churches, an attempt was made to slot in Catholics to provide a stable new moral vocabulary for things. But Catholicism was, and is, too alien to the core American experience. Its language and predilections continue to cut against the grain of mainstream post-Protestant culture; reminding post-Protestants still a bit too much of ancient oppressions, foreign ideology and papal despotism. Catholic intellectuals (and a few Orthodox Christians) speak with a distinctive voice about American culture and have some ability to criticize it, often quite incisively, from the outside. But they inevitably remain outsiders. Even as they have successfully integrated, Catholics lack the absolute moral certainty about their primary role in American culture that post-Protestants have retained even as they left their actual theology behind. Americans are at heart Homo-Protestanticus, regardless of their religions, and that is unlikely to ever change.
In its heyday, the Protestant Mainline gave Americans a coherent philosophical voice with which to both praise and condemn their nation. The loss of that voice created a vacuum that has yet to be filled with something equally stable. As Bottum argues, Protestantism was one of three chair legs holding up the psychological and spiritual life of the country alongside Democracy and Capitalism. When it suddenly collapsed, for reasons he doesn't fully answer in this book, it began creating a radically new post-Protestant culture still visibly in the throes of its creation. As Christopher Lasch put it, we modern people are all drawing on the savings stored during prior ages. If you live in America and are part of its culture, you're a little, and perhaps extremely, Protestant in your morals and worldview. Nothing is wrong with that and indeed much is good. The question is remaining aware of this as a religion, and, accordingly, the emotional heights and dangers to which extremism in such matters can expose one.
People have not lost the desire for salvation, even after they have, theoretically at least, cut the cords of metaphysical belief that previously bound them. Today salvation is believed to be tied to holding the correct idea of social ills, roughly the ones that Rauschenbaush articulated with a few new ones likely tacked on today. Acting against the ills is of course nice but the most important thing is to oppose them deeply in your heart. This civic religion transfers its metaphysical hopes onto an earthly redemption that frees the world from these social evils. An anguished spiritual cry, inarticulate, righteous, and deeply good in its fury against sin and the Kingdom of Evil that continues to exist despite our recognition of it. In doing so the social gospel gradually cut away the earthy stuff of birth and death that religion used to be mainly concerned with, leaving a purely "social" outlook. This has always sat a bit strangely with me and probably prevented me from blindly embracing such a worldview.
Religion is not gone and never truly goes away. America has been deeply Protestant since the first settlers arrived on its shores and remains a Protestant nation today even if its post-Protestant mainstream scarcely thinks of itself that way. In the void opened up by the collapse of the Mainline churches, an attempt was made to slot in Catholics to provide a stable new moral vocabulary for things. But Catholicism was, and is, too alien to the core American experience. Its language and predilections continue to cut against the grain of mainstream post-Protestant culture; reminding post-Protestants still a bit too much of ancient oppressions, foreign ideology and papal despotism. Catholic intellectuals (and a few Orthodox Christians) speak with a distinctive voice about American culture and have some ability to criticize it, often quite incisively, from the outside. But they inevitably remain outsiders. Even as they have successfully integrated, Catholics lack the absolute moral certainty about their primary role in American culture that post-Protestants have retained even as they left their actual theology behind. Americans are at heart Homo-Protestanticus, regardless of their religions, and that is unlikely to ever change.
In its heyday, the Protestant Mainline gave Americans a coherent philosophical voice with which to both praise and condemn their nation. The loss of that voice created a vacuum that has yet to be filled with something equally stable. As Bottum argues, Protestantism was one of three chair legs holding up the psychological and spiritual life of the country alongside Democracy and Capitalism. When it suddenly collapsed, for reasons he doesn't fully answer in this book, it began creating a radically new post-Protestant culture still visibly in the throes of its creation. As Christopher Lasch put it, we modern people are all drawing on the savings stored during prior ages. If you live in America and are part of its culture, you're a little, and perhaps extremely, Protestant in your morals and worldview. Nothing is wrong with that and indeed much is good. The question is remaining aware of this as a religion, and, accordingly, the emotional heights and dangers to which extremism in such matters can expose one.
April 9, 2014
I first became acquainted with Joseph Bottum as the editor of First Things, a conservative journal dealing with religion in the public square. In his brief reign as editor, he brought flair, elegance, and extravagance to the journal—qualities that brought about his editorial demise, as First Things has a rather serious audience that does not appreciate full-color photographs (an innovation of his) interrupting pages of lengthy prose. Flair and elegance are also on display in An Anxious Age, as Bottum renders a serious (and sociological) book into a light and lovely reflection on religion in America.
Bottum focuses on two topics. Firstly, Bottum posits the transformation of 'mainline' Protestantism into a new secular ethos. He persuasively argues that today's 'elite' liberals are in cultural continuity with the mainline Protestants (e.g. liberal but religious; not fundamentalist) that once dominated the American scene. The new 'elite' retain the old Protestant sense of superiority and righteousness, but have simply dropped Christianity along the way. Secondly, Bottum examines how Catholicism attempted to fill the void left by mainline Protestantism and ultimately failed in so doing. He argues that Catholicism supplied America a new political rhetoric—based on the ideas of natural law and human dignity—that Evangelicals embraced. However, he finds that Catholicism did not and perhaps cannot replace traditional Protestantism in America, as the country is Protestant at its core.
This is only a small snapshot of An Anxious Age. Bottum fiddles with numerous ideas and observations, all of which show how significant and how strange American religion is. (But what of the rise of Mormonism? This is a pertinent topic that Bottum fails to address.) Unfortunately, Bottum frequently digresses, in particular by writing beautiful but inapposite biographies of major figures in America. These digressions make the book feel like a collection of essays loosely tied together by a not quite overarching theme. Whatever faults this book may have, Bottum's elegant style makes it worth reading. And oddly enough, because intellectuals are almost always cynics, I finished this book with the impression that Bottum is a man who genuinely cares for both religion and America.
Bottum focuses on two topics. Firstly, Bottum posits the transformation of 'mainline' Protestantism into a new secular ethos. He persuasively argues that today's 'elite' liberals are in cultural continuity with the mainline Protestants (e.g. liberal but religious; not fundamentalist) that once dominated the American scene. The new 'elite' retain the old Protestant sense of superiority and righteousness, but have simply dropped Christianity along the way. Secondly, Bottum examines how Catholicism attempted to fill the void left by mainline Protestantism and ultimately failed in so doing. He argues that Catholicism supplied America a new political rhetoric—based on the ideas of natural law and human dignity—that Evangelicals embraced. However, he finds that Catholicism did not and perhaps cannot replace traditional Protestantism in America, as the country is Protestant at its core.
This is only a small snapshot of An Anxious Age. Bottum fiddles with numerous ideas and observations, all of which show how significant and how strange American religion is. (But what of the rise of Mormonism? This is a pertinent topic that Bottum fails to address.) Unfortunately, Bottum frequently digresses, in particular by writing beautiful but inapposite biographies of major figures in America. These digressions make the book feel like a collection of essays loosely tied together by a not quite overarching theme. Whatever faults this book may have, Bottum's elegant style makes it worth reading. And oddly enough, because intellectuals are almost always cynics, I finished this book with the impression that Bottum is a man who genuinely cares for both religion and America.
September 8, 2014
I don't often find myself reading explicitly right-wing books. However, An Anxious Age had an interesting thesis, and I'm fascinated both with the long-term decline of religious authority in the United States and the ghostly echo of Christian ideas among otherwise secular people. Bottum's basic argument that you can see the essence of modern-day liberal thinking in the early 20th century Social Gospel, only in secular form, strikes me as basically true. (And An Anxious Age isn't a narrowly partisan book, even though it seems basically geared to a conservative religious audience.)
I am grateful to The Anxious Age for being introduced to the writings of Walter Rauschensbach, whom I'd never really read much about. Rauschensbach's insistence that instances of injustice aren't aberrations in a basically decent country, but speak to a deep-seated corruption at the heart of society, has its echoes in liberal discussions about Ferguson or the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian. His list of social sins that caused the death of Christ ("religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit (being "the social group gone mad") and mob action, militarism, and class contempt") are all live concerns, although these days you'd probably add the patriarchy and white supremacy to the list. And Rauschensbach's emphasis on living free of these social sins as a form of redemption reminds me of any number of 'How To Be An Ally' posts on Facebook.
What's interesting about this is how Protestant it all seems, even in its modern-day incarnation. Rauchensbach's formulation of the moral corruption at the core society owes a lot to the traditional idea of original sin. Bottum calls modern-day social liberals 'the elect', and there's something to that too--this is an oppositional notion, that you're standing a little apart from society, able to see it whole and entire and live free of its historical forces. There are echoes of the mentality I saw in my (heavily Calvinist) childhood, that we were sinners living in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Having said that, I think Bottum (perhaps as both a right-wing Catholic and a figure in the conservative movement) suffers from major blind spots. The second half of the book focuses on the alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelicals in America since the 1970s, which has basically meant evangelical votes for Catholic ideas. The irony of this--which Bottum misses--is that this is just a right-wing Social Gospel, as vaguely ecumenical and interested in social activism over maintaining traditional doctrine. The Religious Right has done more than any other organization to reconcile evangelicals with Catholics and Mormons, two traditional enemies of right-wing Protestants.
Bottum also takes it for granted that the ambition of the First Things-style Catholics was to speak in a universal way for the nation, as the mainline Protestants once did. The Religious Right even at its height never had the kind of following that mainline Protestant churches once commanded, and never could so long as their religious message was married to a partisan political agenda. That style of Catholic social teaching is only 'universal' in the sense that it appeals to all kinds of Republicans.
Bottum also frets that the decline of religions means it will cease to 'unify' America and modulate social conflicts, but I'm skeptical that American religion has ever served such a purpose. There's a reason why we have Southern Baptists, or for that matter a Presbyterian Church of America and a Presbyterian Church (USA)--religious divisions that were created in the run up to the Civil War. Most of the time, religion in America reinforced social divisions, as illustrated by the H. L. Mencken joke that the Episcopalian church was "the Republican Party at prayer." Even today, religion is a deeply segregated enterprise.
Reading An Anxious Age, it's hard not to marvel at the marked decline in organized religion over the past fifty years. In 1965, for example, the churches that made up mainline Protestantism accounted for more than 50% of America by themselves--not including evangelicals or fundamentalists, who numbered tens of millions more. Given current trends, America will cease to be a majority Protestant country in the next few years. The evangelical churches are not only shrinking, they're graying as wel1; among millennials, 33% claim no religious affiliation at all.
I'm a little conflicted about An Anxious Age. On the one hand, I found it deeply fascinating, as evidenced by the fact that I read it in basically one sitting yesterday. On the other hand, I think Bottum is limited by his position in the conservative movement, both in terms of his arguments as outlined above and also in the occasional, unmotivated sneer at liberals that belied the high-minded tone he was trying to cultivate. In general I'm glad I read it, and it gave me a lot to think about.
I am grateful to The Anxious Age for being introduced to the writings of Walter Rauschensbach, whom I'd never really read much about. Rauschensbach's insistence that instances of injustice aren't aberrations in a basically decent country, but speak to a deep-seated corruption at the heart of society, has its echoes in liberal discussions about Ferguson or the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian. His list of social sins that caused the death of Christ ("religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit (being "the social group gone mad") and mob action, militarism, and class contempt") are all live concerns, although these days you'd probably add the patriarchy and white supremacy to the list. And Rauschensbach's emphasis on living free of these social sins as a form of redemption reminds me of any number of 'How To Be An Ally' posts on Facebook.
What's interesting about this is how Protestant it all seems, even in its modern-day incarnation. Rauchensbach's formulation of the moral corruption at the core society owes a lot to the traditional idea of original sin. Bottum calls modern-day social liberals 'the elect', and there's something to that too--this is an oppositional notion, that you're standing a little apart from society, able to see it whole and entire and live free of its historical forces. There are echoes of the mentality I saw in my (heavily Calvinist) childhood, that we were sinners living in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Having said that, I think Bottum (perhaps as both a right-wing Catholic and a figure in the conservative movement) suffers from major blind spots. The second half of the book focuses on the alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelicals in America since the 1970s, which has basically meant evangelical votes for Catholic ideas. The irony of this--which Bottum misses--is that this is just a right-wing Social Gospel, as vaguely ecumenical and interested in social activism over maintaining traditional doctrine. The Religious Right has done more than any other organization to reconcile evangelicals with Catholics and Mormons, two traditional enemies of right-wing Protestants.
Bottum also takes it for granted that the ambition of the First Things-style Catholics was to speak in a universal way for the nation, as the mainline Protestants once did. The Religious Right even at its height never had the kind of following that mainline Protestant churches once commanded, and never could so long as their religious message was married to a partisan political agenda. That style of Catholic social teaching is only 'universal' in the sense that it appeals to all kinds of Republicans.
Bottum also frets that the decline of religions means it will cease to 'unify' America and modulate social conflicts, but I'm skeptical that American religion has ever served such a purpose. There's a reason why we have Southern Baptists, or for that matter a Presbyterian Church of America and a Presbyterian Church (USA)--religious divisions that were created in the run up to the Civil War. Most of the time, religion in America reinforced social divisions, as illustrated by the H. L. Mencken joke that the Episcopalian church was "the Republican Party at prayer." Even today, religion is a deeply segregated enterprise.
Reading An Anxious Age, it's hard not to marvel at the marked decline in organized religion over the past fifty years. In 1965, for example, the churches that made up mainline Protestantism accounted for more than 50% of America by themselves--not including evangelicals or fundamentalists, who numbered tens of millions more. Given current trends, America will cease to be a majority Protestant country in the next few years. The evangelical churches are not only shrinking, they're graying as wel1; among millennials, 33% claim no religious affiliation at all.
I'm a little conflicted about An Anxious Age. On the one hand, I found it deeply fascinating, as evidenced by the fact that I read it in basically one sitting yesterday. On the other hand, I think Bottum is limited by his position in the conservative movement, both in terms of his arguments as outlined above and also in the occasional, unmotivated sneer at liberals that belied the high-minded tone he was trying to cultivate. In general I'm glad I read it, and it gave me a lot to think about.
October 22, 2020
'An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America' is a 2014 book that has already appeared to have garnered a second life due to the cleverly-dubbed "Great Awokening" that has plagued the USA in these last few years, particularly since Donald Trump entered the White House. The book's author, Joseph Bottum, served as editor of the ecumenical, conservative magazine 'First Things' from 2005-2010, between the influential founder Father Richard John Neuhaus and the acerbic pro-Trump national conservative R.R. Reno. Bottum seems more of a strict essayist compared to his predecessor (who served as an unofficial advisor to George W. Bush) and successor (who previously served as a theology professor). Indeed, as another reviewer has already commented, 'An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America' is a rambling circumvolucation through American cultural (and particularly religious) history.
Bottum's book, absent of any bibliography (though Bottum is obviously widely-read), is divided into two sections. The first, "The Poster Children and the Protestant Perplex" continues the long-trod Catholic tradition of critiquing the hollowing-out of a robust Protestant Mainline in America (though Bottum, to his credit, is one of the few thinkers - particularly from his side of the Tiber - who genuinely mourns this steep decline; he realizes that even if American Christendom was a product of the Protestant Mainline, it was at least Christendom of SOME KIND and it provided the country with a moral vocabulary that was easy enough for everyone to speak). Bottum laments that:
"Somewhere in the 1960s, the waters began to run shallow, and by the 1990s, the central channel of American Mainline Protestantism was almost dry...I won't pretend not to regret this; even as someone without much sympathy for the theological history of those churches, I mourn their loss. The Mainline may have been an intellectually emaciated form of Christendom, as Catholic writers tended to insist, but it was all the Christendom we had in America, and it offered us a vocabulary with which both to criticize the nation and to support it. Mainline Protestantism gave us a vague but vast unity that stood outside politics and economics, and it kept us more or less whole as a people, even at our most divided" (p. 12).
Bottum discusses the decline of the Mainline throughout the rest of the section, touching on Walter Rauschenbusch and the social gospel tradition of liberal Protestantism and on how figures such as William James drifted towards doubt and unbelief. Time and time again he brings up the steep decreases in membership of America's Mainline. The Mainline's descendants may no longer go to church, recite the Nicene Creed, pray, or read their Bibles but they have inherited nonetheless a religious zeal for moral righteousness - this is what we see in social justice activists, etc...this analysis is why Bottum's book has garnered some second looks lately. According to Bottum, the post-Protestant elite class are:
"Usually liberal in their politics, often despising of religion, always secure in their cultural judgments, they are the beneficiaries of the ostensible meritocracy of secondary education. And yet they actually know themselves as superior - MORALLY elite, more highly advanced - most of all by their rejection of the pall of social evil that they believe to hang over nearly all of the past and much of the present (especially over social classes other than their own, p. xviii)."
The second half of the book is entitled "The Swallows of Capistrano and the Catholic Conundrum." Bottum's primary point in this part of the book is to explain how as the Protestant Mainline declined, Roman Catholicism stepped in to fill the void in moral vocabulary that had been reduced to a whisper. It has commonly been reported that evangelicals, one of the bedrock blocs of the current Republican party, reacted to Roe vs. Wade with a mere shrug; that it took Catholicism to awaken conservative Protestants to the atrocity that was and is abortion. Catholics began taking a leading role in sociopolitical discourse, whether that was William F. Buckley hosting 'Firing Line,' Richard John Neuhaus in the pages of 'First Things,' the natural law tutelage of Robert P. George, or the dramatic life and example of Pope John Paul II.
Another astonishing piece to the Catholic story is the spirit of Vatican II which looms large in this book. As an evangelical, I have observed that fellow Protestants to convert to Rome often tout Catholicism's unity. But as Bottum points out, in the aftermath of Vatican II:
"...anything seemed possible. Remember Malachi Martin's odd best sellers? Remember 'The Exorcist?' In 1971 a Massachusetts Jesuit named Robert Drinan became the first Catholic priest elected to the U.S. Congress - only to reject the emerging pro-life movement as 'the powers of darkness' and denounce his fellow Catholics for 'seeking to impose' their pro-life views 'on the rest of the nation.' Stretching the Church on both ends, Latin America produced both Gustavo Gutierrez's 'A Theology of Liberation,' a key text in the emergence of an openly Marxist Catholicism, and Joaquin Saenz y Arriaga's 'Sede Vacante,' a foundational book for the new traditionalism. The exiled archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc - brother of the assassinated Catholic president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem - was wandering the globe, consecrating his own bishops left and right. The Jesuits were giving up ownership of their colleges. The nuns were giving up their habits (p. 204)."
It is, of course, a credit to John Paul II and his papacy that he was able to keep the cracking cathedral of Catholicism together. Bottum further comments that as the Mainline plunged into decline in the 1970s, they were:
"...no longer capable of playing their traditional part in the American experiment. The Evangelicals were rising, but they lacked the intellectual and institutional resources to replace the dying Mainline denominations. And so it fell to Catholicism to provide the missing support for the national proposition. Like every political arrangement, the American experiment had always relied on an implicit theo-politics, a generally agreed upon understanding of the relation of God and man, and Catholicism appeared ready to be slotted in as the new theo-political pillar of the nation (p. 231)."
There is much to consider in this, one of the book's central claims. Certainly, Catholicism has produced important public intellectuals such as Avery Cardinal Dulles, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Pope Benedict XVI, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Mary Ann Glendon, and those mentioned above. 'First Things' is likely a much more influential magazine than a Protestant-birthed alternative such as 'Comment.' But it is hard to dismiss the "evangelical (or at least Protestant) renaissance" that blossomed during the latter half of the twentieth century; Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga in philosophy, Frederick Buechner and Wendell Berry in literature, Paul Ramsey, Stanley Grenz, and Oliver O'Donovan in ethics, and George Marsden and Mark Noll in history. Wheaton, Fuller, and Baylor may not be Notre Dame but they have nevertheless produced able scholars. Admittedly though, Catholicism has likely had a louder voice in public discourse than the divided Protestant community.
This is an interesting book, both sweeping and strangely narrow at times. As Bottum acknowledges at the end, this book was birthed in parts in various publications and it reads like that. Scholars of American religion will complain that Bottum's chronicle is too surface-level. Bottum's chapter on John Paul II was hagiographic (as Bottum's point is to highlight how the Polish pope inspired the globe and provided an impressive public personification of Catholicism) but it also seems somewhat outside of the orbit of a book looking specifically at America. The writing can be both long-winded, punchy, and pleasant and it still an enjoyable read.
Bottum's book, absent of any bibliography (though Bottum is obviously widely-read), is divided into two sections. The first, "The Poster Children and the Protestant Perplex" continues the long-trod Catholic tradition of critiquing the hollowing-out of a robust Protestant Mainline in America (though Bottum, to his credit, is one of the few thinkers - particularly from his side of the Tiber - who genuinely mourns this steep decline; he realizes that even if American Christendom was a product of the Protestant Mainline, it was at least Christendom of SOME KIND and it provided the country with a moral vocabulary that was easy enough for everyone to speak). Bottum laments that:
"Somewhere in the 1960s, the waters began to run shallow, and by the 1990s, the central channel of American Mainline Protestantism was almost dry...I won't pretend not to regret this; even as someone without much sympathy for the theological history of those churches, I mourn their loss. The Mainline may have been an intellectually emaciated form of Christendom, as Catholic writers tended to insist, but it was all the Christendom we had in America, and it offered us a vocabulary with which both to criticize the nation and to support it. Mainline Protestantism gave us a vague but vast unity that stood outside politics and economics, and it kept us more or less whole as a people, even at our most divided" (p. 12).
Bottum discusses the decline of the Mainline throughout the rest of the section, touching on Walter Rauschenbusch and the social gospel tradition of liberal Protestantism and on how figures such as William James drifted towards doubt and unbelief. Time and time again he brings up the steep decreases in membership of America's Mainline. The Mainline's descendants may no longer go to church, recite the Nicene Creed, pray, or read their Bibles but they have inherited nonetheless a religious zeal for moral righteousness - this is what we see in social justice activists, etc...this analysis is why Bottum's book has garnered some second looks lately. According to Bottum, the post-Protestant elite class are:
"Usually liberal in their politics, often despising of religion, always secure in their cultural judgments, they are the beneficiaries of the ostensible meritocracy of secondary education. And yet they actually know themselves as superior - MORALLY elite, more highly advanced - most of all by their rejection of the pall of social evil that they believe to hang over nearly all of the past and much of the present (especially over social classes other than their own, p. xviii)."
The second half of the book is entitled "The Swallows of Capistrano and the Catholic Conundrum." Bottum's primary point in this part of the book is to explain how as the Protestant Mainline declined, Roman Catholicism stepped in to fill the void in moral vocabulary that had been reduced to a whisper. It has commonly been reported that evangelicals, one of the bedrock blocs of the current Republican party, reacted to Roe vs. Wade with a mere shrug; that it took Catholicism to awaken conservative Protestants to the atrocity that was and is abortion. Catholics began taking a leading role in sociopolitical discourse, whether that was William F. Buckley hosting 'Firing Line,' Richard John Neuhaus in the pages of 'First Things,' the natural law tutelage of Robert P. George, or the dramatic life and example of Pope John Paul II.
Another astonishing piece to the Catholic story is the spirit of Vatican II which looms large in this book. As an evangelical, I have observed that fellow Protestants to convert to Rome often tout Catholicism's unity. But as Bottum points out, in the aftermath of Vatican II:
"...anything seemed possible. Remember Malachi Martin's odd best sellers? Remember 'The Exorcist?' In 1971 a Massachusetts Jesuit named Robert Drinan became the first Catholic priest elected to the U.S. Congress - only to reject the emerging pro-life movement as 'the powers of darkness' and denounce his fellow Catholics for 'seeking to impose' their pro-life views 'on the rest of the nation.' Stretching the Church on both ends, Latin America produced both Gustavo Gutierrez's 'A Theology of Liberation,' a key text in the emergence of an openly Marxist Catholicism, and Joaquin Saenz y Arriaga's 'Sede Vacante,' a foundational book for the new traditionalism. The exiled archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc - brother of the assassinated Catholic president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem - was wandering the globe, consecrating his own bishops left and right. The Jesuits were giving up ownership of their colleges. The nuns were giving up their habits (p. 204)."
It is, of course, a credit to John Paul II and his papacy that he was able to keep the cracking cathedral of Catholicism together. Bottum further comments that as the Mainline plunged into decline in the 1970s, they were:
"...no longer capable of playing their traditional part in the American experiment. The Evangelicals were rising, but they lacked the intellectual and institutional resources to replace the dying Mainline denominations. And so it fell to Catholicism to provide the missing support for the national proposition. Like every political arrangement, the American experiment had always relied on an implicit theo-politics, a generally agreed upon understanding of the relation of God and man, and Catholicism appeared ready to be slotted in as the new theo-political pillar of the nation (p. 231)."
There is much to consider in this, one of the book's central claims. Certainly, Catholicism has produced important public intellectuals such as Avery Cardinal Dulles, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Pope Benedict XVI, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Mary Ann Glendon, and those mentioned above. 'First Things' is likely a much more influential magazine than a Protestant-birthed alternative such as 'Comment.' But it is hard to dismiss the "evangelical (or at least Protestant) renaissance" that blossomed during the latter half of the twentieth century; Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga in philosophy, Frederick Buechner and Wendell Berry in literature, Paul Ramsey, Stanley Grenz, and Oliver O'Donovan in ethics, and George Marsden and Mark Noll in history. Wheaton, Fuller, and Baylor may not be Notre Dame but they have nevertheless produced able scholars. Admittedly though, Catholicism has likely had a louder voice in public discourse than the divided Protestant community.
This is an interesting book, both sweeping and strangely narrow at times. As Bottum acknowledges at the end, this book was birthed in parts in various publications and it reads like that. Scholars of American religion will complain that Bottum's chronicle is too surface-level. Bottum's chapter on John Paul II was hagiographic (as Bottum's point is to highlight how the Polish pope inspired the globe and provided an impressive public personification of Catholicism) but it also seems somewhat outside of the orbit of a book looking specifically at America. The writing can be both long-winded, punchy, and pleasant and it still an enjoyable read.
August 27, 2016
I can't give a complete review, since I only read the first half of the book, which was on how Protestantism changed into post-Protestantism, and the concluding chapter. The other half was on what's happened to Catholicism in our national life, but I was less interested in that.
I liked this book, because it addressed something I've been seeing for years, but couldn't fully explain: Why people who are politically active (though I should say liberals in particular) are so adamant about supporting a political position without seeming to have the ability to back it with anything substantial, other than a seeming faith that they're right. They are unwilling to listen to a substantial argument about why they may be addressing societal problems in a way that's counterproductive, preferring instead to essentially call anyone who disagrees evil, and in some cases take punitive actions against them for their views. It occurred to me that this seemed like religious behavior--a "secular religion." It seemed puritanical as well.
Bottum's analysis agreed with mine: It is religious behavior, but without an identified religion. Bottum calls it "post-Protestantism." He explains from a historical and sociological perspective how this came about, that it came out of Mainline Protestantism, through a few different theologians, philosophers, and religious leaders.
The main subject of this part of his book is a man named Walter Rauschenbusch, a Protestant theologian who created a social religious movement in the early 20th century. Bottum says if you read Rauschenbusch's books, "A Theology for the Social Gospel," and "Christianity and the Social Crisis," you will see the character of today's post-Protestants. The key difference between what Rauschenbusch advocated and the post-Protestants is that Rauschenbusch believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but today's post-Protestants don't even think about Jesus. They are the people who say of themselves that they're "spiritual, but not religious." In their minds they've left the "religious tommyrot" behind. Bottum says they maintain the same religious character as their Protestant ancestors, but regarding public social issues, rather than regarding their own souls. They reject their ancestors' self-consciousness, and faith in Christianity. Instead they insist they have a public consciousness, and what they fight against and attack is all the historical evils they perceive in this world, including Christianity. Yet still, they seek a kind of spiritual salvation, as their ancestors did, but by advocating for social causes in the political process. They have a sense of themselves that they have been redeemed by transforming their personality, and through a recognition of society's historical social evils. "Sin" to them exists as "demons and ghosts," as Bottum characterize it, in an odd sort of way. If you talk to them, they won't describe themselves as "redeemed," nor will they profess a belief in "demons and ghosts," but it's hard to characterize their beliefs about themselves and the world any other way, because there is no rational explanation for it. They have no justification for their behavior other than their recognition of these social evils, and the peer support they receive from their politically ideological community.
Bottum could be criticized for imposing a religious label on what he sees, but he uses a historical, and sociological perspective (I would argue he assumes some anthropological knowledge as well) to justify it. In my mind, it's difficult to argue with it, because I came to the same conclusion before I read his book. However, one could charge me with engaging in confirmation bias, because Bottum does not support his argument well. He gave me background I did not know, and perhaps others could provide a more accurate account that contradicts his, or fills in details he missed.
Bottum seems to propose that this was a natural process of modernization, but in his conception this contradicts the "founding forces" that formed this country. He explores the Secularization Hypothesis, that as societies modernize they naturally become more secular, and religion falls by the wayside. In the final chapter, he argues that this move toward "secular religion" is troubling, because it's not organized religion in the sense that that term used to mean, and may imperil the entire American project. He accepts as axiomatic that America was founded on a "three-legged stool" of religion, democracy, and capitalism, each creating tension on the other two. He says if (organized) religion is removed, then all we have is democracy and economics fighting it out, and there is nothing moderating them other than each other. In a strange sort of way he uses the growth of religiously extremist movements in the developing world as a "hopeful" sign that the Secularization Hypothesis may be flawed, but he doesn't offer an alternative hypothesis for why Protestantism collapsed, other than a few theories on social forces. As I read, I kept wondering whether this secularization was encouraged by political forces inside and outside our country, but he doesn't address that idea.
A couple large criticisms I have is he talks about five or so people who are his examples of post-Protestants. He gives them fictional names, and talks briefly about their backgrounds, but he doesn't really tie them in to the historical narrative he's talking about. He just assumes you'll trust him that the connection exists. He doesn't let the reader in on the conversations he had with them, except by his own paraphrasing, so that we can get a sense of who these people are as individuals. They may as well be archetypes, which is not very satisfying, since he was trying to write a work of non-fiction.
The historical and sociological perspective he offers is interesting and persuasive, but I think that's as far as it goes. Sociology is not regarded as a hard science, and you do not get hard science here. He wrote it almost as if the reader would recognize many of the points he makes from reading prior background material, or having experienced the history he talks about, but he doesn't give the reader the means to fill in that background in all its detail.
He could've made his argument more substantial, I think, if he had explained the anthropological perspective on religion, and then tied it into the interviews he had with the people he cited, and then his historical narrative, giving lots of footnotes along the way that would help fill in the background detail. Instead one is simply expected to trust that the author's analysis is sound, and that you will agree with him if you look at the same few historical sources he cites. It's an easy read, not a scholarly work, but I think that leaves him open to a lot of criticism, and may cause people to dismiss his argument altogether.
I liked this book, because it addressed something I've been seeing for years, but couldn't fully explain: Why people who are politically active (though I should say liberals in particular) are so adamant about supporting a political position without seeming to have the ability to back it with anything substantial, other than a seeming faith that they're right. They are unwilling to listen to a substantial argument about why they may be addressing societal problems in a way that's counterproductive, preferring instead to essentially call anyone who disagrees evil, and in some cases take punitive actions against them for their views. It occurred to me that this seemed like religious behavior--a "secular religion." It seemed puritanical as well.
Bottum's analysis agreed with mine: It is religious behavior, but without an identified religion. Bottum calls it "post-Protestantism." He explains from a historical and sociological perspective how this came about, that it came out of Mainline Protestantism, through a few different theologians, philosophers, and religious leaders.
The main subject of this part of his book is a man named Walter Rauschenbusch, a Protestant theologian who created a social religious movement in the early 20th century. Bottum says if you read Rauschenbusch's books, "A Theology for the Social Gospel," and "Christianity and the Social Crisis," you will see the character of today's post-Protestants. The key difference between what Rauschenbusch advocated and the post-Protestants is that Rauschenbusch believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but today's post-Protestants don't even think about Jesus. They are the people who say of themselves that they're "spiritual, but not religious." In their minds they've left the "religious tommyrot" behind. Bottum says they maintain the same religious character as their Protestant ancestors, but regarding public social issues, rather than regarding their own souls. They reject their ancestors' self-consciousness, and faith in Christianity. Instead they insist they have a public consciousness, and what they fight against and attack is all the historical evils they perceive in this world, including Christianity. Yet still, they seek a kind of spiritual salvation, as their ancestors did, but by advocating for social causes in the political process. They have a sense of themselves that they have been redeemed by transforming their personality, and through a recognition of society's historical social evils. "Sin" to them exists as "demons and ghosts," as Bottum characterize it, in an odd sort of way. If you talk to them, they won't describe themselves as "redeemed," nor will they profess a belief in "demons and ghosts," but it's hard to characterize their beliefs about themselves and the world any other way, because there is no rational explanation for it. They have no justification for their behavior other than their recognition of these social evils, and the peer support they receive from their politically ideological community.
Bottum could be criticized for imposing a religious label on what he sees, but he uses a historical, and sociological perspective (I would argue he assumes some anthropological knowledge as well) to justify it. In my mind, it's difficult to argue with it, because I came to the same conclusion before I read his book. However, one could charge me with engaging in confirmation bias, because Bottum does not support his argument well. He gave me background I did not know, and perhaps others could provide a more accurate account that contradicts his, or fills in details he missed.
Bottum seems to propose that this was a natural process of modernization, but in his conception this contradicts the "founding forces" that formed this country. He explores the Secularization Hypothesis, that as societies modernize they naturally become more secular, and religion falls by the wayside. In the final chapter, he argues that this move toward "secular religion" is troubling, because it's not organized religion in the sense that that term used to mean, and may imperil the entire American project. He accepts as axiomatic that America was founded on a "three-legged stool" of religion, democracy, and capitalism, each creating tension on the other two. He says if (organized) religion is removed, then all we have is democracy and economics fighting it out, and there is nothing moderating them other than each other. In a strange sort of way he uses the growth of religiously extremist movements in the developing world as a "hopeful" sign that the Secularization Hypothesis may be flawed, but he doesn't offer an alternative hypothesis for why Protestantism collapsed, other than a few theories on social forces. As I read, I kept wondering whether this secularization was encouraged by political forces inside and outside our country, but he doesn't address that idea.
A couple large criticisms I have is he talks about five or so people who are his examples of post-Protestants. He gives them fictional names, and talks briefly about their backgrounds, but he doesn't really tie them in to the historical narrative he's talking about. He just assumes you'll trust him that the connection exists. He doesn't let the reader in on the conversations he had with them, except by his own paraphrasing, so that we can get a sense of who these people are as individuals. They may as well be archetypes, which is not very satisfying, since he was trying to write a work of non-fiction.
The historical and sociological perspective he offers is interesting and persuasive, but I think that's as far as it goes. Sociology is not regarded as a hard science, and you do not get hard science here. He wrote it almost as if the reader would recognize many of the points he makes from reading prior background material, or having experienced the history he talks about, but he doesn't give the reader the means to fill in that background in all its detail.
He could've made his argument more substantial, I think, if he had explained the anthropological perspective on religion, and then tied it into the interviews he had with the people he cited, and then his historical narrative, giving lots of footnotes along the way that would help fill in the background detail. Instead one is simply expected to trust that the author's analysis is sound, and that you will agree with him if you look at the same few historical sources he cites. It's an easy read, not a scholarly work, but I think that leaves him open to a lot of criticism, and may cause people to dismiss his argument altogether.
February 2, 2024
Everyone is in the shadow of Tocqueville‘s “Democracy in America.” This Frenchman has summed up all American Religious Sociology, in 1835, as the tension between Protestant Theology/religion, capitalism, and democracy. Suddenly the role and prominence of Protestantism disappeared from American life. This book explores how and why that happens.
It’s centrally claim is that this problem was specifically caused by Protestantism itself. America survived Marxism, materialism, secularization, but it couldn’t survive the collapse of the Protestant mainline churches. This created a gap to be filled by the children of those Protestants, the post-Protestants, he calls them. A whole generation that became spiritual but not religious. He doesn’t focus on how evangelicals tried to rebuild from this collapse, but the shift towards a more politically centric faith makes sense from Bottom’s thesis, as a rich tradition of Protestantism just disappeared.
What Bottom’s more interested in what tried to be built by the non-Protestant Americans as the replacement: the post-Protestants and Catholicism. In short, a rise among post-Protestants to move past Christianity, as a sign of moral superiority with thoughts like “it’s more Christian to not be Christian”, and the divorcing of Catholic thought-system from the practices and reputation of the Roman Catholic Church created in both American Christians and non-Christians an emphasis to be more “moral”, “right”, and “intellectual” than their peers. This made spiritual living the new norm and pillar in American life. Moralism replaced Protestantism; and thus Tocqueville’s complement on how the stream of Protestantism was accessible by all in American life vanished.
What I love about this book is not only the presentation of this thesis but also how it is a concise summary of all American Religious sociology in supporting that thesis. I whole heartedly recommend this book for everyone to understand the religious environment of America more broadly.
It’s centrally claim is that this problem was specifically caused by Protestantism itself. America survived Marxism, materialism, secularization, but it couldn’t survive the collapse of the Protestant mainline churches. This created a gap to be filled by the children of those Protestants, the post-Protestants, he calls them. A whole generation that became spiritual but not religious. He doesn’t focus on how evangelicals tried to rebuild from this collapse, but the shift towards a more politically centric faith makes sense from Bottom’s thesis, as a rich tradition of Protestantism just disappeared.
What Bottom’s more interested in what tried to be built by the non-Protestant Americans as the replacement: the post-Protestants and Catholicism. In short, a rise among post-Protestants to move past Christianity, as a sign of moral superiority with thoughts like “it’s more Christian to not be Christian”, and the divorcing of Catholic thought-system from the practices and reputation of the Roman Catholic Church created in both American Christians and non-Christians an emphasis to be more “moral”, “right”, and “intellectual” than their peers. This made spiritual living the new norm and pillar in American life. Moralism replaced Protestantism; and thus Tocqueville’s complement on how the stream of Protestantism was accessible by all in American life vanished.
What I love about this book is not only the presentation of this thesis but also how it is a concise summary of all American Religious sociology in supporting that thesis. I whole heartedly recommend this book for everyone to understand the religious environment of America more broadly.
July 30, 2016
The book comes in two parts, which are not as closely related as one might expect. The first part deals with the devolution of the Mainline Churches into post-Christian individuals who are not moored to any acknowledged transcendental values, but who nonetheless espouse political views from a religiously held viewpoint. The first half of the book would have been much stronger is supported by more data (some data was given).
The second half of the book seemed a shorthand defense of Catholic intervention in the politics of morality in the past half century, coupled with a description of the fading effects of such intervention. There were also short hagiographies of John Paul II and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Looking at the book as a whole, it is somewhat despairing in that the collapse of Protestant cultural cohesion is credibly put forth, along with the failure of Catholicism to fill the void, leaving the U.S. with a divided electorate at deep levels and no common vocabulary, or shared ideals, to keep the nation centered.
The book is worth reading as background or general information on the De-Christianization of current American culture, but only in conjunction with other, more scholarly works on the subject.
The second half of the book seemed a shorthand defense of Catholic intervention in the politics of morality in the past half century, coupled with a description of the fading effects of such intervention. There were also short hagiographies of John Paul II and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Looking at the book as a whole, it is somewhat despairing in that the collapse of Protestant cultural cohesion is credibly put forth, along with the failure of Catholicism to fill the void, leaving the U.S. with a divided electorate at deep levels and no common vocabulary, or shared ideals, to keep the nation centered.
The book is worth reading as background or general information on the De-Christianization of current American culture, but only in conjunction with other, more scholarly works on the subject.
May 18, 2014
Interesting thesis that the Protestant Social Gospelers became the non-active liberal class in America today: same Protestant sin-avoidance (but not individual sins, but social sins like bigotry) and same lack of need for active Good Works for salvation (you just need to be separated from the Evils of the world and you don't need to fight them to be saved.).
The authors self-assured conservatism was a bit of a wall for someone who wasn't baked in that world, so some of the references and assumptions were inaccessible and some of the judgments were lacking empathy.
But, definitely an interesting connection between the Social Gospel movement and "spiritual but not religious" liberals today. A good book in an under appreciated topic today: the effects of the decline of Mainline Protestantism. Was useful for my "What the Heck Happened?" Project exploring the origins of our current political/cultural malaise/confusion/anxiety.
The authors self-assured conservatism was a bit of a wall for someone who wasn't baked in that world, so some of the references and assumptions were inaccessible and some of the judgments were lacking empathy.
But, definitely an interesting connection between the Social Gospel movement and "spiritual but not religious" liberals today. A good book in an under appreciated topic today: the effects of the decline of Mainline Protestantism. Was useful for my "What the Heck Happened?" Project exploring the origins of our current political/cultural malaise/confusion/anxiety.
February 15, 2014
A rather discursive approach to sorting out the impact of religion in America and the way it informs politics and culture. An interesting argument about the impact of the collapse of the mainline protestant churches and the attempt by Catholics to fill that void.
September 4, 2024
"An Anxious Age" was written in 2014, and the trends it describes have accelerated during the past ten years. The decline of Mainline Christianity (which is what "Protestant" refers to in this context) has continued apace, and has been joined by the decline of evangelicalism and Catholicism as well. It seems likely to me that Bottum is correct that the decline of Mainline Christianity has contributed to the bitterness and division we see in American society, as neither evangelicalism nor Catholicism are suited to fill the void. His explanation of why the Mainline collapsed - that the early 20th century "social gospel" eventually swallowed the Gospel itself - seems likely to me, but not a sufficient explanation. I think the book would have been stronger if he had delved into this problem even more deeply than he did. Much of the book is taken up with the early 20th century theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, a leading exponent of the social gospel, but it seems as though the book leaps from Rauschenbush to the collapse of the Mainline with little explanation.
Bottum's discussion of the current state of Catholicism in America is stronger, perhaps because it is easier to write about a subject with which you are intimately familiar (Bottum is Catholic). His strongest point in this section (and probably most unwelcome to many of my friends) is that the revived faith and practice of the "John Paul II generation," although it holds hope for the future, is not (and is unlikely to become) a major _cultural_ force in American society. America has anti-Catholicism and suspicion of authority in her DNA, and Catholicism itself is too intellectual a system for a people who dismiss "ritual" and "hierarchy" (while an increasing number of young women hold "new moon ceremonies" and other Neo-pagan rituals - irony is not dead). And perhaps most importantly, "a chosen tradition is not quite the same as an inherited tradition."
Perhaps Bottum's strongest point in the book is that although the children of Mainline Protestantism have lost their faith, they have lost none of the self-confidence that comes with the assurance that one is among the elect. It is simply that instead of believing they are one of God's chosen like their Puritan forebears, they believe they are chosen because they hold the right views on racism, militarism, the environment, and so on. With the assurance of a Boston Brahmin, they dominate universities, media, the professions, etc., much to the chagrin (particularly) of their evangelical ... well, not brethren, as neither group acknowledges kinship with the other!
Bottum's discussion of the current state of Catholicism in America is stronger, perhaps because it is easier to write about a subject with which you are intimately familiar (Bottum is Catholic). His strongest point in this section (and probably most unwelcome to many of my friends) is that the revived faith and practice of the "John Paul II generation," although it holds hope for the future, is not (and is unlikely to become) a major _cultural_ force in American society. America has anti-Catholicism and suspicion of authority in her DNA, and Catholicism itself is too intellectual a system for a people who dismiss "ritual" and "hierarchy" (while an increasing number of young women hold "new moon ceremonies" and other Neo-pagan rituals - irony is not dead). And perhaps most importantly, "a chosen tradition is not quite the same as an inherited tradition."
Perhaps Bottum's strongest point in the book is that although the children of Mainline Protestantism have lost their faith, they have lost none of the self-confidence that comes with the assurance that one is among the elect. It is simply that instead of believing they are one of God's chosen like their Puritan forebears, they believe they are chosen because they hold the right views on racism, militarism, the environment, and so on. With the assurance of a Boston Brahmin, they dominate universities, media, the professions, etc., much to the chagrin (particularly) of their evangelical ... well, not brethren, as neither group acknowledges kinship with the other!
January 13, 2024
The first half of the book contains some of the best sociological analysis of the way contemporary American culture is, whether one likes it or not, shaped by mainline Protestantism and its decline. Social justice, as Bottum points out, is merely a secularized version of the Social Gospel movement of fin de siecle America. He writes that we are in "an anxious age" as we desperately search for meaning in a time of declining faith in deities. Bottum walks the reader through the development of the Social Gospel and how it reflects through people we see today, and he makes up "poster children" that serve as its archetypes, although he makes them up and then disappointingly puts them aside very quickly.
The second half, on the other hand, is a history of American Catholicism that is rather sloppily done. Bottum notes at the end that this book is spliced together from various essays he wrote for other magazines, and it's clear in the Catholic part, as many chapters are incongruent with the others. This book is worth reading just for the first half though, one can skip the second half unless one wants to hear about how Catholic intellectualism developed in Cold War America. There's also not a lot of discussion on Catholicism vs. liberalism.
Bottum also doesn't talk about a few things, namely the role Evangelicalism played after the fall of the mainline, instead choosing to claim that Catholicism filled that role. There's little mention of Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, and other religions that may fully illustrate the American religious tapestry. Also, Bottum writes about how younger people are more pro-life, which was quite naive, as the exact opposite has been shown post-Dobbs. All in all, the first half of the book is required reading for any budding sociologist of American culture.
The second half, on the other hand, is a history of American Catholicism that is rather sloppily done. Bottum notes at the end that this book is spliced together from various essays he wrote for other magazines, and it's clear in the Catholic part, as many chapters are incongruent with the others. This book is worth reading just for the first half though, one can skip the second half unless one wants to hear about how Catholic intellectualism developed in Cold War America. There's also not a lot of discussion on Catholicism vs. liberalism.
Bottum also doesn't talk about a few things, namely the role Evangelicalism played after the fall of the mainline, instead choosing to claim that Catholicism filled that role. There's little mention of Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, and other religions that may fully illustrate the American religious tapestry. Also, Bottum writes about how younger people are more pro-life, which was quite naive, as the exact opposite has been shown post-Dobbs. All in all, the first half of the book is required reading for any budding sociologist of American culture.
April 29, 2024
Biased and boring. Too much academic theory, but not much taste for deep and accurate survey research. The is not an objective book.
The section on the decline of the mainstream Protestant churches doesn't sufficiently explore secularism's many causes (changes in technology, history of science, the feminist revolution, growth of the middle class, immigration paterns, urban lifestyles.) His preferred methodology is to set up a handful of seemingly representative, seemingly fictional characters who essentially do his bidding. Would actual voices culled from large randomized national surveys be less under his control, so less likely to do conform to his conclusions? While virtues such as the Protestant Work Ethic are clearly not part of the formation of many young people today, this book is not informative as to how we got here.
And that's the better half of the book.
Part Two dwells on Roman Catholics. Although Bottum subscribes to the more traditionalist branch of this faith (and the attendant politics) he shows no zest for the dramatic arc experienced by many who grew up having inherited it from childhood. Nor does he track back substantively. The fall-off happened over the last 70 years, so the evidence and many stories are still available as primary sources. There are novels, plays, books, films, songs and comedy routines which show how Catholicism, much like Protestanism, also lost its grip on the formerly faithful. While conservative Catholics have nothing on fundamentalist Protestants when it comes to Biblical literalism, they do maintain a longer standing specificity of supernatural beliefs unyielding to today's rational thought. The irony and hypocricy revealed in the decades-long litany of abuse scandals was a major event in sharp contrast to "the Spirit of America." It crossed "party lines" within Catholicism, snaring both rigid autocrats and slippery liberals. Not only did the abuses evolved under -- some would say developed from -- the RC church's own repressive sexual ethics regime. Despite the shame and public disgrace, they are still focused on imposing their ethical framework on our judicial system. Not very eccumenical. Sorry, no sale, Mr. Bottom. Glad I borrowed this one from the library.
The section on the decline of the mainstream Protestant churches doesn't sufficiently explore secularism's many causes (changes in technology, history of science, the feminist revolution, growth of the middle class, immigration paterns, urban lifestyles.) His preferred methodology is to set up a handful of seemingly representative, seemingly fictional characters who essentially do his bidding. Would actual voices culled from large randomized national surveys be less under his control, so less likely to do conform to his conclusions? While virtues such as the Protestant Work Ethic are clearly not part of the formation of many young people today, this book is not informative as to how we got here.
And that's the better half of the book.
Part Two dwells on Roman Catholics. Although Bottum subscribes to the more traditionalist branch of this faith (and the attendant politics) he shows no zest for the dramatic arc experienced by many who grew up having inherited it from childhood. Nor does he track back substantively. The fall-off happened over the last 70 years, so the evidence and many stories are still available as primary sources. There are novels, plays, books, films, songs and comedy routines which show how Catholicism, much like Protestanism, also lost its grip on the formerly faithful. While conservative Catholics have nothing on fundamentalist Protestants when it comes to Biblical literalism, they do maintain a longer standing specificity of supernatural beliefs unyielding to today's rational thought. The irony and hypocricy revealed in the decades-long litany of abuse scandals was a major event in sharp contrast to "the Spirit of America." It crossed "party lines" within Catholicism, snaring both rigid autocrats and slippery liberals. Not only did the abuses evolved under -- some would say developed from -- the RC church's own repressive sexual ethics regime. Despite the shame and public disgrace, they are still focused on imposing their ethical framework on our judicial system. Not very eccumenical. Sorry, no sale, Mr. Bottom. Glad I borrowed this one from the library.
December 4, 2021
Read this to understand where we are today. This book was published before the woke religion picked up steam in recent years. The first part of the book is more interesting and relatable for more readers given the discussion and focus on mainline Protestantism reframing its central tenets in a new form. Understanding how the Social Gospel movement ultimately removed the Christianity out of the conversation speaks to part of the challenges that the Protestant denominations in America have faced in the 20th century.
The second part of the book focused more on the shifts in Catholic thought in America throughout the 20th century. Bottum adroitly explains how the theological underpinnings of Catholicism in America are undergoing a change and also bringing to light the types of people that are becoming attracted to this thought.
An Anxious Age provides the reader with a well thought out explanation for why you have heard many people say they are "spiritual, but not religious". Reading this in 2021 I cannot help but think Bottum was on to something citing some of the twentieth century thinkers that are semi-frequently appearing more and more in today's discource(Lasch in particular) and how what used to be the ennui and unease with Christianity in general has just moved on to new forms of religion.
Would encourage any one who wants to understand how belief has transitioned in our age to mull over Bottum's Erie Canal Thesis.
The second part of the book focused more on the shifts in Catholic thought in America throughout the 20th century. Bottum adroitly explains how the theological underpinnings of Catholicism in America are undergoing a change and also bringing to light the types of people that are becoming attracted to this thought.
An Anxious Age provides the reader with a well thought out explanation for why you have heard many people say they are "spiritual, but not religious". Reading this in 2021 I cannot help but think Bottum was on to something citing some of the twentieth century thinkers that are semi-frequently appearing more and more in today's discource(Lasch in particular) and how what used to be the ennui and unease with Christianity in general has just moved on to new forms of religion.
Would encourage any one who wants to understand how belief has transitioned in our age to mull over Bottum's Erie Canal Thesis.
February 18, 2020
Hmmm...where to start with this one?
I’ve found myself equal parts fascinated, annoyed, and defensive while reading this book. Fundamentally, I agree with Bottum’s thesis. His contention and supporting arguments are compelling and cogent to the extreme.
Where I begin to fray with his thinking is in the color commentary. Having no context on the background of Bottum prior to my reading, I quickly discovered we differed politically, which didn’t bother me all that much. My belief is that his characterization of motivations were off-putting to me. For example, while describing Katharine Jefferts Schori, “She seems, rather, a fairly typical liberal Protestant: a rentier, living off the income from the property and prestige her predecessors gained, strolling at sunset along the strand as the great tide of the Mainline ebbs further out to sea.” Seems a bit harsh and presumptuous.
Bottum is at his strongest when discussing Pope John Paul II, followed closely by his intellectual (I hope) exercise of what Post-Protestantism means for the future. In the PJPII section is where he really flexes his poetic muscles.
Overall, this read was enlightening and appreciated. It put words and ideas to deep-seated feelings that were difficult to pin down. I intend to read more by this author and would recommend to anyone seeking to explore the politcal-religious affiliation to our current state of society.
I’ve found myself equal parts fascinated, annoyed, and defensive while reading this book. Fundamentally, I agree with Bottum’s thesis. His contention and supporting arguments are compelling and cogent to the extreme.
Where I begin to fray with his thinking is in the color commentary. Having no context on the background of Bottum prior to my reading, I quickly discovered we differed politically, which didn’t bother me all that much. My belief is that his characterization of motivations were off-putting to me. For example, while describing Katharine Jefferts Schori, “She seems, rather, a fairly typical liberal Protestant: a rentier, living off the income from the property and prestige her predecessors gained, strolling at sunset along the strand as the great tide of the Mainline ebbs further out to sea.” Seems a bit harsh and presumptuous.
Bottum is at his strongest when discussing Pope John Paul II, followed closely by his intellectual (I hope) exercise of what Post-Protestantism means for the future. In the PJPII section is where he really flexes his poetic muscles.
Overall, this read was enlightening and appreciated. It put words and ideas to deep-seated feelings that were difficult to pin down. I intend to read more by this author and would recommend to anyone seeking to explore the politcal-religious affiliation to our current state of society.
December 26, 2021
Bottum describes the decline of what he calls the mainline Protestant religions in America and the influence of these churches on a new cultural elite that has replaced traditional religion with a series of leftist causes that they believe grants them moral superiority. I read this because I’m interested in the decline of religion in America and the ideas and preoccupations that are filling the void.
This book consists of two long (and often slightly meandering) essays. The second half contains some interesting discussions of Catholic intellectualism and recent moral alliances that have developed between Protestant and Catholic evangelicals in recent years. Bottum’s central thesis is an interesting one, and he incorporates the writings of several religious figures into his analysis, but his tone often feels slightly superior and self-assured to me. In addition, the personas he sets up in the beginning to demonstrate the thinking of today’s cultural elite are not well-integrated throughout the rest of the book. All in all, there are some thought-provoking ideas presented here but I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’d hoped.
This book consists of two long (and often slightly meandering) essays. The second half contains some interesting discussions of Catholic intellectualism and recent moral alliances that have developed between Protestant and Catholic evangelicals in recent years. Bottum’s central thesis is an interesting one, and he incorporates the writings of several religious figures into his analysis, but his tone often feels slightly superior and self-assured to me. In addition, the personas he sets up in the beginning to demonstrate the thinking of today’s cultural elite are not well-integrated throughout the rest of the book. All in all, there are some thought-provoking ideas presented here but I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’d hoped.
August 18, 2020
I read this after seeing it mentioned by Ross Douthat in an NYT op-ed. The big thesis of part 1 (like many, I skipped part 2) is that the spirit of "woke" culture is crazy and unsettling (not surprising if you are already interested in this book) in a pattern that is very much of a piece with the "Social Gospel" Protestants like Rauschenbausch, themselves clear scions of the Great Awakening. Once you see it, you can't unsee it and like many great theses, it's so obvious after the fact that you wonder why no one has mentioned it.
The author is surprisingly erudite and incorporates many other explanations of American culture. This is refreshing in a genre that seems to lean too heavily on "look at my great idea" while either ignoring or unconsciously restating what's come before.
My only gripe is that it seems that the substance of the argument could have fit in an article more concisely and convincingly. Much of the retelling, though engaging, feels unnecessary. Overall, I would recommend it.
The author is surprisingly erudite and incorporates many other explanations of American culture. This is refreshing in a genre that seems to lean too heavily on "look at my great idea" while either ignoring or unconsciously restating what's come before.
My only gripe is that it seems that the substance of the argument could have fit in an article more concisely and convincingly. Much of the retelling, though engaging, feels unnecessary. Overall, I would recommend it.
May 30, 2019
Quite an interesting read. This book is more of an essay collection than a straightforward argument. The book is split into two main essays. In the first, the author believes that the decline of "Mainline" Protestant churches, such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians, has drastically affected American culture. Bottum believes that with the decline of these churches America has lost its moral center and a shared cultural framework. In the second essay, the author talks about the course of Catholicism from the end of the Second World War to the Priest scandals. Throughout both sections, the book is scattered with other essays that more or less tie everything together. In some ways, the book was a bit looser than I had expected.
March 13, 2022
Bottum is writing from a conservative Catholic position so there is definitely an underlying prescription in the book that a return to an (in my opinion, slightly imagined) ideal of an old Christian social morality would solve the larger national existential he observes — along with an uncritical thirty page eulogy of John Paul II — but I think overall it's an interesting observation of a social phenomenon I've been thinking about quite a bit. Although unlike Bottum, I actually find the removal of explicit religious doctrine, but a retention of a nebulous spirituality — or just a frame of thinking — to be actually indicative of the mindset that created it you know? Like what remains of an ideology or a mode of thinking when you strip away all leavening morality?
October 5, 2017
An insightful book, especially in the first section where Bottum describes the decline of the Mainline churches and its impact on American culture. He also explains how Catholics and Evangelicals have sought to provide what the Mainline once offered, but have thus far failed. America has benefited from churches that are distinctly and authentically religious, giving a place from which to both support and critique the culture. Making social concerns the primary issue in the church, as the social gospel did, destroys this arrangement.
February 12, 2022
I wish I could give this 5-stars. The first part and concluding chapter of this book on the rise of post-protestants were great. However, the 2nd part of the book on the relationship between Catholics and mainline evangelicals was lackluster and really dragged on. It probably could have just been one chapter because it didn’t do much to develop the thesis.
October 29, 2021
A historical and theoretical look at where the Mainline Protestant Church came from, the detailed synopsis of the Catholic Church's evolution in the last 30 years and the Protestant Church's role in politics today.
June 25, 2023
Ok book. I thought the first half was fairly interesting with a development of the author’s thesis. The second half seemed scattered with the chapters not complementing each other to further the author’s point.
January 29, 2020
Terrific. Fascinating explanation of American culture and current societal challenges.
July 21, 2014
The author in this book analyzes how the social, political and religious cultures of the United States interact and reinforce one another. America has been a predominantly Protestant nation since its founding, and so for most of that time a Protestant consensus about social and political behavior provided the common language for our national discourse. Since the 1970's the old "Mainline" Protestant denominations (Presbyterian, Methodists, Episcopalians, United Church of Christ, etc. - the denominations that have been the main membership of the National Council of Churches) have been in steep decline, losing large percentages of their memberships, and also the political and cultural influence they once had. The rise of the "Nones" - the people who claim no religious affiliation - has gone way up, although many of them will claim to be "spiritual but not religious". These people he describes as "Post-Protestants" since they tend to come from families that were once in the Mainline Protestant denominations.
This decline thus produced a vacuum into which came a strange alliance of Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. The second half of the book discusses the evolution of Catholicism over the past half century, both as an institution and as a set of ideas. The alliance of Catholics and Evangelicals has not been particularly successful in creating a new political and moral consensus. Witness the current divisiveness in our politics.
There is so much more that could be said here, but all I will say is that this is a book that should be read by anyone seeking an understanding of the internal challenges our nation faces.
This decline thus produced a vacuum into which came a strange alliance of Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. The second half of the book discusses the evolution of Catholicism over the past half century, both as an institution and as a set of ideas. The alliance of Catholics and Evangelicals has not been particularly successful in creating a new political and moral consensus. Witness the current divisiveness in our politics.
There is so much more that could be said here, but all I will say is that this is a book that should be read by anyone seeking an understanding of the internal challenges our nation faces.
July 20, 2015
An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America is tough to categorize. The primary thesis is that the old mainline Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists), who used to be a conservative, unifying force across all swathes of social class and geography, lost their influence. Early in in the 20th century, those mainline denominations embraced the "social gospel," turning Christ from being evangelism-focused to being focused on making the world a better place. This shift led to the hollowing out of cultural pillars that had anchored American society for centuries.
In their stead arose several groups: the fundamentalist Evangelicals (though this book is only incidentally about the rise of Evangelicals); the intellectual and morally retrenching Catholics; and the culturally and socially judgmental albeit unchurched "nones."
The thesis is provocative, but I'm not terribly convinced by the argument. Bottum writes in overheated prose littered with allusions to Durkheim, Weber, etc., but he has to do more to carry his argument.
In sum, fascinating read, somewhat long, fairly academic, interesting but not persuasive.
In their stead arose several groups: the fundamentalist Evangelicals (though this book is only incidentally about the rise of Evangelicals); the intellectual and morally retrenching Catholics; and the culturally and socially judgmental albeit unchurched "nones."
The thesis is provocative, but I'm not terribly convinced by the argument. Bottum writes in overheated prose littered with allusions to Durkheim, Weber, etc., but he has to do more to carry his argument.
In sum, fascinating read, somewhat long, fairly academic, interesting but not persuasive.
April 30, 2014
I found this analysis of the current state of America to be very interesting. The author follows two groups of prototype Americans -- the "Poster Children" cultural descendents of Mainline Protestants, and the "Swallows of Capistrano," the new flavor of American Catholics. For both the historical underpinnings of the current trends are deeply researched, and he makes some very interesting points about the fact that we are still living in a strongly spiritual age -- it's simply post-Christian in many ways.
I would have liked some sort of wrap up along the lines of, "Then where does this leave us? Where do we go from here?" but the book as a whole serves more as a descriptive, not a prescriptive analysis of trends of religiosity within the public sphere in the United States. Very interesting, very insightful.
I would have liked some sort of wrap up along the lines of, "Then where does this leave us? Where do we go from here?" but the book as a whole serves more as a descriptive, not a prescriptive analysis of trends of religiosity within the public sphere in the United States. Very interesting, very insightful.
July 2, 2015
Superb. The first half of this book is about how today's secular culture in America arose from liberal mainstream Protestantism, and the second half is about developments in Roman Catholicism and its relationship to American culture over the past half-century. I almost skipped the second half because I thought it would be less relevant (since I'm not Roman Catholic), but it turned out to be as important and insightful as the first half of the book.
A good supplement to the book is Bottum's essay on "The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas," published by the Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/article....
A good supplement to the book is Bottum's essay on "The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas," published by the Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/article....
April 25, 2015
This is essentially two books in one. In the first part, the author explains the decline of American protestantism and the rise of secular spiritualism (oxymoron, I know, but how else do you describe those who see political and environmental causes as religion?). The second half is about the rise (and fall?) of the new evangelism among American catholics. It is a worthy read even for just the first part. The second part is really "inside baseball" and may be difficult for non-catholics to understand.
April 13, 2015
"The most significant historical fact of the last fifty years is the collapse of Mainline Protestantism".
A convincing argument by a Catholic intellectual who explains how so much of American politics today is driven by people driven by the same moral angst of Protestantism, but without Christ to center them. Everything from environmentalism, obsessions with food, feminism, etc. -- so many people have adopted Protestant ideas of the Social Gospel while wholly rejecting the central idea of Christ within that gospel.
A convincing argument by a Catholic intellectual who explains how so much of American politics today is driven by people driven by the same moral angst of Protestantism, but without Christ to center them. Everything from environmentalism, obsessions with food, feminism, etc. -- so many people have adopted Protestant ideas of the Social Gospel while wholly rejecting the central idea of Christ within that gospel.
May 29, 2016
An attempt to analyze the rise and fall of Mainline Protestantism and the impact it's had on Catholics. Some insightful moments, but not by any means the final word on the complicated subject. The idea of focusing on pivotal moments in American theology is a really excellent one and bears meaningful fruit. However, the author's idea to trace the meandering trails of Protestants who left the church is not realized past the anecdotal level. Getting a handle on this is the key for understanding the growing divide between America's faithful and intellectual classes.
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