The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism [Paperback]

As Fogel explains, the leaders of the The Second (roughly 1800 until 1870) "preached that the American mission was to build God's kingdom on earth....An array of reform movements [eg temperance, abolition of slavery, elimination of graft in government] sought to make America a fit place for the Second Coming of Christ." The Third (from about 1890 until the 1930s) involved a continuation of certain reforms as well as the introduction of others led by modernists and Social Gospelers who "laid the basis for the welfare state, providing both the ideological foundation and the politic drive for the labor reforms of the 1930, 1940s and 1950s, and for the civil rights reforms of the 1950 and 1960s, and for the new feminist reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s."

In Fogel's view, the Fourth Great Awakening now underway has resulted in attacks on material corruption, the rise of pro-life and pro-family movements, campaigns for values-oriented school curricula, an expansion of tax revolt, and an attack on entitlements. Fogel observes: All of the Great Awakenings are "not merely, nor primarily, religious phenomena. They are primarily political phenomena in which the evangelical churches represent the leading edge of an ideological and political response to accumulated technological, economic, and social changes that undermined the received culture."

As stated previously, Fogel's purpose is to provide "a framework for analyzing the movements that shaped the egalitarian creed in America." In process, he places the Fourth Great Awakening within an historical frame-of-reference. Here is the sequence of subjects analyzed:

Introduction: The Egalitarian Creed in America

One: The Fourth Great Awakening, the Political Realignment of the 1990s, and the Potential for Egalitarian Reform

Two: Technological Change, Cultural Transformations, and Political Crises

Three: The Triumph of the Modern Egalitarian Ethic

Four: The Egalitarian Revolution of the Twentieth Century

Five: The Emergence of a Postmodern Egalitarian Agenda

Afterword: Whither Goes Our World?

When concluding his analysis, Fogel suggests that the spiritual struggles for those in future generations will be "more complex and more intense than those of my generation." Nonetheless, Fogel hopes they will possess "a maturity and intellectual vitality that will help [them] find better solutions than we have found." Meanwhile, in 2000, will anyone deny that our society has urgent spiritual needs, secular as well as sacred? I agree with Fogel that "Spiritual (or immaterial) inequity is now as great a problem as material inequity, perhaps even greater." Rather than defer that problem to our grandchildren, we have a moral imperative to solve or at least alleviate that problem. To do so, we must first understand the nature and extent of its complexity. I know of no other single volume which can contribute more to that understanding than can The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism.

I believe the above reviews from the Wall Street Journal and Mr. Morris do a sufficient job. I am here to recommend it to you. John B. Carpenter jamits@juno.com

In this book he asks readers to conjoin political and religious movements with deeper longings for satisfaction from living. Thanks to Richard Easterlin we know that money does not buy happiness. Fogel explores what long-term tendencies in the American past sought to look beyond Benthamite utility for larger meanings. His search will not always be satifying to all readers, particularly those expecting to find a Marxian dialectic at the root of positive change.

In reading the book, non-specialists get a special treat: a non-technical survey of factors that brought on the unprecedented improvements in levels of living in North Atlantic countries over the past two hundred years.