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?
Anxiety about assurance of salvation has been a recurring element in Protestantism since Luther first went into the tower, but its occurrence can be paralleled in Catholicism (Alphonsus Ligouri, e.g.), varies over time, and probably can be seen as an artifact of social psychology. I think perhaps it's the ghost of Max Weber that's stalking the landscape here -- the residual notion that a secular representative of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was at least a midwife at the birth of capitalism.
--C. G. Estabrook