Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Seasons of Grace

Home
Catholic
Joseph Bottum’s “AN ANXIOUS AGE”: He Had Me at ‘Hello’

Joseph Bottum’s “AN ANXIOUS AGE”: He Had Me at ‘Hello’

Last updated on: August 23, 2014 at 11:16 am by Kathy Schiffer

Joseph Bottum’s “AN ANXIOUS AGE”: He Had Me at ‘Hello’ 2014-08-23T11:16:14-05:00 Kathy Schiffer

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Joseph Bottum’s important new book An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America, has been sitting on my bedside table for a few months, just begging to be opened and sampled. I read a lot of books; I enjoy them, I often report on them. I just hadn’t gotten around to this one. Yet.

In fact, I’m not too proud to admit that it took a Comcast line breaking in our front yard (and the resultant loss of internet and cable service) that made me sit down this evening and crack open An Anxious Age with its patriotic, red/white/blue jacket.

But NOW… Now it’s 1:30 a.m., and here I am, spellbound by the combination of terse imagery and heady significance, the abundance of logic and the splash of irony in Bottum’s telling of the American sociological story. My husband is soundly sleeping. I turned off the light once, twice…. but I CAN’T PUT THIS BOOK DOWN!

Thanks a lot, Joseph.

* * * * *

Joseph Bottum

In truth, I could spend an entire essay talking only about Bottum’s 12-page Preface.

He has schooled me in American history: Surely, I learned back in high school about our nation’s First Great Awakening in 1733; but alas, I was absent that day—or else (more likely) it just didn’t seem compelling at the time, when I’d just discovered glitter nail polish and Sadie Hawkins dances and sixteen-year-old boys.

I chuckled at his reminiscences about the “lifeboat theology” evident at a Catholic academic conference, and his reflection on the spiritual angst of the young protesters in the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, claiming to speak for the “99 percent.”

And Bottum’s “Erie Canal Thesis of American history”–the idea that we can’t explore the moral, social, and intellectual culture of any moment in American history without recognizing the central role played by Protestant Christianity, and especially its decline in membership? It’s brilliant.

* * * * *

But to the thesis itself:

Joseph Bottum analyzes two distinct social classes: those he calls the “Poster Children”, the college-educated elite who are the direct descendants of the Mainline Protestants; and those he terms the “Swallows of Capistrano”–the JPII Catholics, formed by the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.

Poster Children

The first group, the “Poster Children”, are, in Bottum’s words,

“the heirs and descendants of the social gospel movement. In their thoughts and in their words, in what they have done and what they have failed to do, they correspond precisely with the “ganglion chain of redeemed personalities in a commonwealth” for which Walter Rauschenbusch called in his 1912 Christianizing the Social Order.”

(Here, I had in mind a specific individual in my own social circle; and perhaps you can better understand Bottum’s analysis by applying his terminology to someone from among your own immediate family or close friends who fits the bill.)

In Bottum’s construct, the “Poster Children” see themselves as “redeemed” (although they don’t use that terminology). They probably don’t attend church, since church is itself part of the social problem, and they consider church attendance to be unnecessary for their redemption. Belief in Jesus does not typically inspire them for, as Bottum observes, the nation’s strong Christians often appear to the Poster Children to be on the wrong side of the social divide. And likewise Jesus, in their view, is not necessary for their redemption.

What really matters to this group is that they’ve been awakened from the slumber of past generations and they now see the evil that is spread over civilization. They’ve been “transformed” into the elect, repentant of their collective social sins. For the Poster Children, their self-esteem and confidence, the confidence that they have been “redeemed”, through their rejection of that metaphysical evil, which shows itself most of all in bigotry, militarism, the vulgar mob—and in Rauschenbusch’s six sins of society.

The Swallows of Capistrano

The second group which Bottum cites in his hefty analysis is the group he titles “Swallows of Capistrano”—Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II. These are serious-minded young Catholics, intellectuals who experience their faith as an idea with a large set of social, political, and moral consequences.

It is this view—of faith as more than merely a religion, but as an idea which has profound consequences—that is both irritating and frightening to newspaper editors and college professors and political activists. These cultured despisers of religion, Bottum would say, can deal with faith as an illogical remnant of bygone ages; but as an idea? An idea is a problem; for truly, an idea can change the world.

* * * * *

Bottum ends his book with an imaginary meeting between two distinctly different women, each representing one of the two worldviews he’s described: the Poster Child Bonnie, and the Swallow of Capistrano, Eleanor. The scorn with which each regards the other rang true in my own lived experience, meeting people from both camps and reading the daily newspaper.

“The post-Protestant Bonnie’s multiple divorces and fractured family would horrify the younger Catholic woman. Her moral certainties would seem cheap, unearned, and deeply offensive: the old Mainline class would probably appear as over easy as an egg. Most of all, Bonnie’s claims of spirituality would strike Eleanor as theologically illiterate, metaphysically bizarre, and morally reprehensible in their self-centeredness.

Meanwhile, of course, confronted with the thought of Eleanor, Bonnie would find the younger woman a freak of backwardness, for shouldn’t each new generation be even more free of the past than the previous generation had been? If she could not dismiss Eleanor as stupid, Bonnie would probably suspect her of being sexually repressed. But regardless of what she perceived as the cause of Eleanor’s individual failure, the young Catholic’s existence would confirm Bonnie in her class’s belief that the ancient pall of social evil still hangs over the present.

The stark reality of that propositional chasm is frightening; Bottum insisted, though, that while the two women might despise one another in the abstract, they could enjoy one another’s company at dinner. There is some comfort, I suppose, to be gleaned from that.

An Anxious Age is a well-researched and well-written description of the American political landscape. But in writing about it, I feel like the mythical prisoner in Plato’s cave—recounting one small slice of the whole, based on my limited perspective. Read the whole book! You’ll find yourself nodding in agreement at every new idea.

Previous Post

August 22, 2014

The Queenship of Mary Is Deeply Rooted in Scripture

Next Post

August 26, 2014 ....And Jesus Wept

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category #Synod14 Abortion Abstinence Abuse Addiction Adoption Advent Adventure Advertising Aging Agnosticism All Saints Day All Souls Day Amish Anathema Angels Anglican Animals Annulment Annunciation Apocalypse Apologetics Apostles Apostleship of the Sea Apparitions Archangels Archbishop Cordileone Archbishop Dolan Archbishop Vigneron Archeology Architecture Art Art Buchwald Ash Wednesday Assisted Suicide Astronauts Atheism Athletes Babies Baptism Beatification Beauty Bible Biochemistry Bioethics Birds Bishop Lori Bishops Blasphemy Books Canon Law Canonization Capital Punishment Cardinal Burke Cardinal Dolan Cardinal George Caritas Catechesis Catechism of the Catholic Church Catholic Catholic Education Catholic Higher Education Catholic Social Teaching Celibacy Cemeteries Character Charity Chastity Cheapskate Christian Unity Christmas Churches Civil Rights Cloning Comedy Communion of Saints Community Kitchens Confession Confirmation Conscience Consequences Consistory Constitution Contraception Conversion Cooking Councils of the Church Creativity Criminal Justice Cristero War Crucifixion Crystal Cathedral Culture Death Death and Dying Death Penalty Department of Health and Human Services Diaconate Dictatorship of Relativism Dignity Disability Discrimination Dissidence Divorce Doctors of the Church Early Church Fathers Easter Economics Ecumenism Education Encyclicals Environmentalism Episcopal Church Eucharist Euthanasia Evangelism Evangelists Evangelization Evolution Excuses Facebook Faith Families Family Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Federal Government Feminism Fiction Film First Amendment First Communion For Greater Glory Forgiveness Free Speech Friends Friendship Gender Discrimination Germany Gnosticism Good Friday Government Grace Greed Gregorian Calendar Happiness Health Heaven Heresy History Holidays Holiness Hollywood Holy Land Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Holy Week Holy Year Home Sweet Home Homosexuality Hope Humanism Humility Humor Imagination Immaculate Conception Immigration Impulsivity In Vitro Fertilization Incarnation Indulgences Infallibility Internet Islam Italy Jerusalem Jesus Judaism Justice Kathleen Sebelius Labor Movement LCWR Lent Life Literature Liturgy Lourdes Love Magi Marketing Marriage Martyrdom Martyrs Mary Mass Media Medical Ethics Mexico Michigan Miracles Missionaries Modernism Modesty Monks Monothelitism Motherhood Movies Mushrooms Music Muslim Mystery Mysticism Mythology Nativity Natural Law Nature New Evangelization New Media New Year New Year's Resolutions Nostalgia Obscenity Occult Old Testament Origen Orthodox Orvieto Pallium Papacy Parenting Patience Patriarch Bartholomew Patriotism Peace Peace and Justice Penitence Pentecost People Persecution Philosophy Poetry Political activism Political Correctness Politics Polls Pop Culture Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Pope John Paul II Pope John XXIII Pope Paul VI Pope St. Pius X Pope Urban VII Population Prayer Preaching Prejudice Pride Priesthood Pro-Life Protestantism Psychology Purgatory Queenship of Mary Racism Rape Real Presence Reconciliation Reformation Relics Religious Religious Liberty Reliquary Renewal Reproductive Technology Resurrection Rights Romance Rome Royalty Sacraments Sacred Heart Saints Satanism Science Science Fiction Scripture Seal of Confession Secularism Seniors September 11 Seventy Times Seven Sexuality Sharks Sin Smoking Social Communications Social Justice Social Networking Social Sciences Space Exploration Spirituality Sports St. Luke St. Patrick's Day St. Paul St. Peter St. Teresa of Avila Stations of the Cross Steve Jobs Superstition Supreme Court Symbolism Synod Technology Teen Rebellion Television Terrorism Thankfulness Thanksgiving Theology Think This, Not That Tobit Toilets Toys Tradition Traditions Transplants Travel Trinity Twitter U.S. Air Force Uncategorized United Nations USCCB Valentine Vatican Vatican Archives Vatican Blogfest Virtue Vocations Where We Pray White Heart Women World Day of Social Communications World Meeting of Families World News World Youth Day Worship Writing Year of Consecrated Life Year of Faith Year of Mercy Youth

Select a Month December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Where was Paul when he had a vision of a man from Macedonia pleading for help?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Athens Corinth Troas Philippi