Culture Watch
In her newest book, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (University of Illinois Press, 1992), Duke University professor Anne Firor Scott carefully investigates and discusses one of our society's most overlooked and underrated assets, the female voluntary group.
Most of the groups Scott mentions (including benevolent societies established in coastal towns in the 1790s, mid-1800s temperance unions, and community improvement groups of the early 20th century) had some common features: Often the wives and daughters of the communities' most powerful middle- and upper-middle-class men banded together out of a sense of "Christian duty" (though a few non-religiously oriented groups existed) to change their society as they saw fit.
By the mid-1800s the emphasis on benevolence toward individuals had shifted to a more community-focused vision. Many women volunteers, having begun to educate themselves through their organizations, started to work for an end to slavery and for women's suffrage. (The debate over which issue was of greater importance was sometimes heated and ugly.) Later women added concern for labor laws and policies regarding housing and education to their agenda.
The groups did have some problems. They tended to be classist, and integration with groups of activist black women was largely unsuccessful. Also, most of the religious-oriented groups were Protestant; Jewish and Catholic women had their own small organizations, with interaction infrequent.
Gerald G. May's new book, The Awakened Heart: Living Beyond Addiction (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, $16.95, cloth) has the capacity to rekindle hope in wary hearts—real hope, rooted in honesty and faith, not in retreat from reality or creative conformity. But it takes a certain willingness to read these pages, for May's blended background of psychiatry and spiritual guidance enables him to challenge our deepest insecurities and disillusionment even as he nurtures our courage and dreams.
The Awakened Heart offers a spirituality that calls us to listen more to our hearts and less to our heads, to place more priority on love than on efficiency in our lives. May recognizes the "gentle warfare" between love and efficiency, saying, "The enemy is that which would stifle your love: your fear of being hurt, the addictions that restrict your passion, and the efficiency worship of the world that makes you doubt the value of love."
Addiction in May's lexicon is an expansive term. Building on his last work, Addiction and Grace (Harper, 1988, $9.95, paper), May writes, "Attachment nails the energy of our passion to someone or something, producing a state of addiction." He suggests that asking ourselves "freedom questions" is necessary for discerning how much we've allowed addiction to enter into our loves. "The difference is between attachment binding desire," he writes, "and commitment honoring desire." The "Freedom and Intention" chapter concludes with a very encouraging discussion of prayer—a turning toward the "source of love" in which complete freedom exists.
Every New Year's Eve people use the calendar change as an opportunity to reflect on their life and to consider their prospects. The upcoming change of decade and century, and even millennium, is giving society a common milestone to evaluate the past and to take stock of the future.
More Than Just "Christian Megatrends"
Tom Sine, author of the 1981 Mustard Seed Conspiracy, continues his observation of social, scientific, and spiritual trends in his recently released Wild Hope (Word Publishing, 1991, $12.99, paper). Sine issues a wake-up call to the Christian community, notifying us of the alarming technological changes society is in store for.
Sine surveys a number of topics—the environment, robotics and artificial intelligence, biological adaptation, changing economic power centers—charting both nearly realizable technologies and seemingly unimaginable innovations.
Idolatry in the form of technological, scientific, or economic progress is central to the future dangers. And while Sine notes the "captivity of the Christian mind," he often gives the activities of Christian institutions much credence as signs of hope. He calls for a renewed sense of Christian responsibility, so that the church becomes "captured by the Wild Hope of God's vision for the future."
As the debate on political correctness rages, we will examine the literature that fuels this discussion.
One of my buddies from college is a poet. He also writes advertising copy.
As the folks at Mazda are always reminding us, the 1980s-going-on-'90s are really the 1950s.
There's something reassuring about the fact that the flag, the old Stars and Stripes, can still kick up so much popular controversy.
The usual rap on TV cop shows is that they trivialize real life-and-death matters into a glossy package of sanitized violence designed to sell soap and soda pop.
For this future cultural analyst, the legendary '60s were an after-school special.
Political philosophers tell us that one of the great driving forces of human history is the tension between individualism (or liberty) and community (or equality).
Someday in the far-distant future, some 23rd-century Mel Brooks may make a satirical film called The History of the World: Part MCXXXXVII.
The ad line for the new Oliver Stone-Eric Bogosian film, Talk Radio, gets my first nomination for The 1989 William Jennings Bryan "Cross of Gold" Award.
As this is written on November 22, 1988, the pop-cultural atmosphere is a-swamp with remembrance of things Kennedy.
The 1987-88 pop culture season was definitely a red-letter year. And the letter was Hawthorne's scarlet "A." That's for adultery, in case your high school lit is rusty.
Ronald Reagan, it is said, has run America's first cinematic presidency, often taking his ideological cues and policy prescriptions from his familiar world of the silver screen.