Have you weighed any parallels to the 1970s? I've been thinking on that period's spiritual reverberations in New Age-isms and environmentalism, taking place in an American society that had become existentially, societally, and epistemically hungover since the moral rectitude of the (failed?) 1960s. The distrust of government and the chance for reform preceded Nixon's resignation, along with Vietnam, the oil crisis, and the beginning of a years-long economic downturn. Religiously, the 1974 schism in the Presbyterian Church is one data point of the landscape which eventually became the Christian Right (many of the leaving churches were southern churches). In literary development, DeLillo and McCarthy, not Romantics but certainly a new species of writer, were slowly but surely moving into the fore.
COVID-19 isn't a direct comparison, given that the scale and technological system which enabled the lockdowns weren't in place 50 years ago. All this to say, I'm convinced this spiritual spent-ness happened in that period, as it's arguably happening now.
Yes, I have yet to find a really good book on the topic but it’s something I’m thinking of a lot. There are pretty clear disjuncts- the institution was so much more powerful at midcentury that we got a full half century worth of opposition to it even as it was ever more clearly in decline, there was a unitary culture to object to as opposed to a crazy quilt etc; nonetheless our time does seem to rhyme with the 70s in certain important ways.
Fair points on the disjunctions: midcentury culture and institutions were far more stabilizing, coherent, and influential than any of them have been since then. The cultural comedown back then must have been far worse than it is now.
Per your reading search: shamelessly, I'll say I am writing a novel partly on this subject (especially on the environmental movement which survived the 1960s to be institutionalized with the EPA and federal legislation in the '70s, before ecoterrorism later arose in response to its failures).
"Covid-19 plucked us momentarily out of our anaesthetising late modern comforts and made us once again afraid to die." I agree that Covid represented some sort of inflection point. Without debating what was and what wasn't an appropriate response to the pandemic, I think part of the reason it solidified pre-existing rifts in society is that while the fear you describe was very real for many, many others (including me), did not experience Covid as personally life threatening. To link this to my current hobby horse, I think it may be useful to consider political responses to the crisis arising ultimately from our animal natures: the fear of death vs an aversion to being caged.
In terms of the future of American Christianity, at least in its online manifestation, many converts to Orthodox Christianity seem to be in the masculinist "Evangelical" camp - with Rod Dreher accusing Pope Francis of "queering the faith" being the paradigmatic example.
I see your point about Covid. I suppose I was somewhere in the middle because I was not concerned, particularly with my own mortality, but I knew a lot of sick and elderly people at that time. The collection of groups in the Catholic umbrella is definitely a little sloppy, I was thinking of theology and the dualism on the evangelical side rather than the sociology of religion! The begome phenomenon is very interesting to me, although I don’t know that much about it
Have you weighed any parallels to the 1970s? I've been thinking on that period's spiritual reverberations in New Age-isms and environmentalism, taking place in an American society that had become existentially, societally, and epistemically hungover since the moral rectitude of the (failed?) 1960s. The distrust of government and the chance for reform preceded Nixon's resignation, along with Vietnam, the oil crisis, and the beginning of a years-long economic downturn. Religiously, the 1974 schism in the Presbyterian Church is one data point of the landscape which eventually became the Christian Right (many of the leaving churches were southern churches). In literary development, DeLillo and McCarthy, not Romantics but certainly a new species of writer, were slowly but surely moving into the fore.
COVID-19 isn't a direct comparison, given that the scale and technological system which enabled the lockdowns weren't in place 50 years ago. All this to say, I'm convinced this spiritual spent-ness happened in that period, as it's arguably happening now.
Yes, I have yet to find a really good book on the topic but it’s something I’m thinking of a lot. There are pretty clear disjuncts- the institution was so much more powerful at midcentury that we got a full half century worth of opposition to it even as it was ever more clearly in decline, there was a unitary culture to object to as opposed to a crazy quilt etc; nonetheless our time does seem to rhyme with the 70s in certain important ways.
Fair points on the disjunctions: midcentury culture and institutions were far more stabilizing, coherent, and influential than any of them have been since then. The cultural comedown back then must have been far worse than it is now.
Per your reading search: shamelessly, I'll say I am writing a novel partly on this subject (especially on the environmental movement which survived the 1960s to be institutionalized with the EPA and federal legislation in the '70s, before ecoterrorism later arose in response to its failures).
Very stimulating piece! Two complications:
"Covid-19 plucked us momentarily out of our anaesthetising late modern comforts and made us once again afraid to die." I agree that Covid represented some sort of inflection point. Without debating what was and what wasn't an appropriate response to the pandemic, I think part of the reason it solidified pre-existing rifts in society is that while the fear you describe was very real for many, many others (including me), did not experience Covid as personally life threatening. To link this to my current hobby horse, I think it may be useful to consider political responses to the crisis arising ultimately from our animal natures: the fear of death vs an aversion to being caged.
In terms of the future of American Christianity, at least in its online manifestation, many converts to Orthodox Christianity seem to be in the masculinist "Evangelical" camp - with Rod Dreher accusing Pope Francis of "queering the faith" being the paradigmatic example.
I see your point about Covid. I suppose I was somewhere in the middle because I was not concerned, particularly with my own mortality, but I knew a lot of sick and elderly people at that time. The collection of groups in the Catholic umbrella is definitely a little sloppy, I was thinking of theology and the dualism on the evangelical side rather than the sociology of religion! The begome phenomenon is very interesting to me, although I don’t know that much about it