"Henry May, Aaron Abell, and Charles Hopkins have shown that a small but quite influential group of Protestant clergymen and lay thinkers broke free from institutional Protestantism's social conservatism and traveled a difficult route in pioneering the social gospel, but in the main Gilded Age Protestantism is viewed as a conformist, "culture-bound" Christinaity that warmly embraced the rising industrialist, drained the aspiring rich of conscience, and confused or pacified the poor. The writings of an articulate minority suggest to historians that the wealthy busied themselves memorizing Herbert Spencer's aphorisms and purchasing expensive church pews, that the middle classes chased wealth and cheered Horatio Alger, and that the wage earners, busy laboring, found little time to ponder existential questions and felt separated from institutioal Protestanism. Workers wandered from the fold, and the churches lost touch with the laboring classes.
[...]
It is suggested, for example, that a close tie between laissez faire and Gilded Age Protestantism developed partly because the post-Civil War "burst of technological and industrial expansion... created unbridled cheerfulness, confidence, and complacency among the American people" and because "the observational order coinicded in a high degree with the conceptual order and... such coincdence defines social stability." Such was probably the case for successful entrepeneurs and many lesser folk who benefited from rapid industrialization and the era's massive material gains, but the same cannot be inferred for those whose traditional skills became obsolete, who felt economic dependence for the first time, who knew recurrent seasonal and cyclical unemployemnt, and who suffered severe family and social disorganization in moving from farm and town to city and in adapting to industiral and urban priorities and work discipline patterns different from traditional norms."
Gutman goes on to show how many workers took refuge in Protestantism and interpreted it AGAINST the industralization causing so much rupture in their lives and inequality. I can send you the full essay in PDF if you (or anyone else) wants, since I haven't read it in years and am cutting a lot of the nuance.
The bigger question is why right-wing Protestantism has largely eclipsed the "social gospel"/labor strain (perhaps most exemplified by William Jennings Bryant) and its collectivist orientation.
On 2/9/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 9, 2007, at 11:31 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> > ut Henwood shoots two well-aimed holes in the argument:
> >
> > - "[Richard Hofstadter] made the now largely forgotten point that
> > American Protestants have long had a deep sympathy for The Market.
> > Since they see humans as fallen, corrupt creatures always in need of a
> > good kick in the ass, they revere it as a wonderful mechanism of
> > social discipline, punishing the lazy and rewarding the hard-working.
> > If people are poor, it's because they're immoral, impatient, or
> > wasteful.". . .Henwood notes the acceptance of this fantasy explains
> > "why there's been so little political price paid for the economic
> > march back to the 19th century."
> >
> >
> > [WS:] I'd take exception to this argument. While the American
> > Protestant
> > "Arbeit Macht Frei" may hold in some segments of society, it is far
> > from
> > universal. At the same time, The Market is revered by people who,
> > by the AP
> > standards are "immoral, impatient or wasteful," or worse yet,
> > secular and
> > hedonistic.
>
> That's not the point. The point is that The Market is popular among a
> large section of white Protestant America. Most Americans believe
> that hard work is rewarded, and that vice is punished. Antipathy to
> the state and its "handouts" is embedded deep in American common sense.
>
> > I would make that argument rest on a different Hofstadter's notion -
> > "anti-intellectualism."
>
> That's a not-unrelated affair. According to Hof (and I'm totally
> persuaded), much of American anti-intellectualism can be traced to
> the Protestant valorization of the individual - each of us has a
> direct relation with god, so who needs credentials or mediating
> institutions? The common person is at least the equal, and may
> surpass, the educated in wisdom, which is more a moral than an
> educational or experiential category.
>
> > In fact, the love of The Market is grounded in the antithesis of
> > hard work
> > and diligence - it is the shortcut from rags to riches, the
> > quintessence of
> > the American Dream that bypasses the drudgery of education, the
> > toil of hard
> > work, the burden of moral obligations, and the pomposity of high
> > culture.
>
> Though hard work is very often not rewarded, most rich people today
> work hard. The rentier is mostly a thing of the past. The ideal for
> the rich today is to work; even our socialites have a little handbag
> business on the side.
>
> Doug
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <../attachments/20070209/f1a94669/attachment.htm>