On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Wasn't American Protestantism once characterized by extreme anxiety
> over damnation and fear of God's wrath? It seems American
> evangelicals now think they've got the key to the kingdom and they
> never have to worry about anything. Am I missing something?
I believe American Protestantism was always smugly confident of its election, at least vis a vis unbelievers. Remember, before they came here they were the Puritans, never known for their lack of certainty. There have have certainly been several famous intellectuals throughout American literary history that made a big deal about the quandary of faith, and they were embraced in the mid-twentieth century as proto-existentialists. But taking these novelists and preachers as representative was mistaken, IHMO. On the whole, I think they were important precisely because they were seeing through the certainties that everyone else believed in. One could as well take a sample of intellectuals and novelists in the 50's and decide America was pessimistic and anti-mass culture.
There is certainly the theoretical possibility of great anxiety in the doctrine of election and preterition. But existentially, the result of the black/white choice tended rather toward absolute certainty than to doubt, not only among the laity, but also among the founders, like Calvin or Luther. For most lay believers, that was the original beauty of the "inhuman doctrine:" that the unquestioning certainty of their faith was the proof that they'd been elected. Nothing else was necessary. And when all else has been forgotten -- when our consumer culture has lost every other trace of puritan morality when it comes to imagery or dress -- that one idea seems to have travelled down intact: that we're going to heaven, no question about it. And it seems to be the source of the idea that still permeates American culture, that we are the chosen people, with the god-given right to order the world.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com