In An Anxious Age, author Joseph Bottum writes as a Catholic and a sociologist, in this book both in equal measure. He's been criticized from both sides: a devout Catholic said he failed to emphasize the "saving power of faith in Jesus," while a retired IBM engineer faulted him for imagining "that religion has any reality at all."
Mr. Bottum's work survives his critics. He is determined to write a book of sociology rather than theology, while also vigorously defending the role of religion in the discipline. Indeed, he follows in the footsteps sociology's founders: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), Emile Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life), and William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience) all obviously thought religion central to their study. He could also have included Karl Marx on that list, who didn't ignore religion either.
It is only latter day academic sociologists who have dismissed religion, obsessed as they are with race, class and gender. It is worth pointing out that Mr. Bottum has not been an academic, freeing him from the straitjacket of tenure and political correctness. Instead he has earned a living mostly as a journalist and author, distinguishing him in yet another way from his academic peers: the man is a superb writer!
Good writing certainly helps--a lot--but the book is not an easy read. It is incredibly dense and complicated. One shouldn't read it (as I did) on a Kindle--the dead tree version armed with a sharp pencil is a better way to approach this one.
The question Mr. Bottum asks is What happened to the mainline Protestant churches in America? Until about 1960 they dominated our society--the majority of people were churchgoing, and a Protestant ethos dominated our civil discourse. In those days (according to Jewish lore) Jews would become Episcopalians just so they could join the right country club.
But after 1960 it all fell apart. Not only would no Jew even consider becoming an Episcopalian today, the mainline denominations--Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, northern Baptists, Congregationalists--have simply fallen apart, their membership declining to nearly nothing. What happened to all those people? Where did they go?
Some of them became evangelicals--and for a while that was considered the main destination. A smaller group converted to Catholicism. But the majority didn't do either. Instead they lifted themselves out of the pews and ascended into (in their view) a more spiritual place, freed from the stifling and arbitrary rote of "organized religion." In a word, they became post-Protestants, a term Mr. Bottum shortens to poster children.
Who are these poster children, and what do they believe? Typically they hang tenuously on to the coattails of the upper middle class. Occasionally, as for some professors and journalists, that is true in terms of income. More commonly it is in their self-image as members of the elite--the opinion-makers of America. These people hold the right opinions, or as I would put it, they are the keepers of political correctness.
They are not really elite. They're actually just shlubs, generally with undistinguished, middle class jobs as teachers, counselors, civil servants, yoga instructors, etc., defined not so much by their social standing, but rather by a spiritual quality. They view themselves as morally superior--wiser and more perspicacious than others. Certainly more woke than the people they left behind in "organized religion," whom they regard as backward and uncivilized.
More accurately, elite isn't the right descriptor--instead they are members of the elect. They believe themselves to be redeemed, justified through their spirituality, and accomplished by renouncing six evils: bigotry, power, corruption, mass opinion, militarism, and oppression. To which one can add the despoliation of nature. Unlike the unwashed masses, the poster children are guaranteed salvation because of their enlightened attitudes and social activism.
Obviously there is a connection with New England Puritanism, but mediated through American history. Mr. Bottum calls this his the Erie Canal Thesis: that Protestant America descends from Puritanism, but was incubated and elaborated in Upstate New York--also known as the burnt over district. From this region originated the Millerites (today's Seventh-Day Adventists), Spiritualism (which remnant survives in Lily Dale, NY, a worthy tourist destination), and Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormons), along with the women's suffrage movement (Seneca Falls, NY).
Most important in Mr. Bottum's story is Walter Rauschenbusch, son of German immigrants who later joined the faculty at the Rochester Theological Seminary, then part of the University of Rochester. If not the founder, he is at very least the leading exponent of the social gospel movement. Mr. Rauschenbusch is responsible for the six evil sins listed above, which form the core of his belief system.
Two things are apparent: first, though Mr. Rauschenbusch was a Christian, belief in Jesus was actually incidental to his theology. And second, none of the six evils depend on personal behavior--these are not individual sins, but rather social demons. By understanding and combating the six sins, the believer became a redeemed personality, and can be confident of salvation.
The poster children took the logical step and separated the social gospel from its historical faith. Gone was Jesus and the cross; only social sins remained, in recognition of which the person was redeemed. And so were born the post-Protestant elect. Their confidence in salvation is what makes them sound to other Americans as arrogant elitists.
The second half of Mr. Bottum's book is about a revived Catholic faith, the story of how Protestant converts and youthful, born Catholics rejuvenated the Church and responded to the leadership of Pope John Paul II. He dubs these the "swallows of Capistrano." This section is more complicated (I found the first chapter very slow going), and I can't summarize it briefly.
One theme is the failed alliance between Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. The latter brought energy and numbers in support for social conservatism, while the latter brought theological and philosophical depth. In particular, natural law philosophy allowed the opposition to abortion to be stated in secular terms.
The effort to fight legal abortion failed. (As, indeed, it had to. Mr. Bottum doesn't point out the successes of the movement.) The Catholic-Evangelical alliance never captured more than a sliver of the electorate, and acquired no purchase among cultural elites. That was the preserve of post-Protestants.
My criticism of Mr. Bottum's thesis stems from my recent reading of Albion's Seed and Colin Woodard's book (my review here), both on colonial immigration to America. While Mr. Bottum is correct that American Protestantism is not just recycled Puritanism, it remains overwhelmingly a Yankee institution. Like today's post-Protestant elect, the Puritans of yore aspired to build a City on a Hill. Think Barack Obama's favorite phrase (echoing Walter Rauschenbusch), "We can do better than that!" for a summation of poster child Puritanism.
Conversely, Evangelicals are over-represented among the Scots-Irish of Appalachia. Yes, they were originally Presbyterians, but I infer from Albion's Seed that religion was less important to them than it was for other American cultures. Their worship style and theology really hasn't changed all that much. In this case I think Mr. Bottum overstates the decline of Protestant churches.
In summary, I think the poster children are more a Yankee phenomenon than representative of America generally. And the rise of Evangelicalism is as much to do with a simple renaming of Appalachian religion than anything new under the sun.
I think Mr. Bottum is right to bring religion back into sociology. What he says is really interesting. I'm too old to read hard books that are poorly written. I did read this book--from cover to cover. It's a beautiful book and well worth your time. Make sure you sharpen your pencil.
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