The Center for the Study of Government and the Individual (CSGI) held a talk with Joseph Bottum on Feb. 19 on spiritual anxiety and political disaster.
Bottum is a public intellectual, philosopher and author. He currently works as a Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy at CU Boulder, according to CU Boulder reporting.
Bottum’s talk argued that contemporary U.S. culture can be explained in large part by the country’s roots in Protestantism, and that post-protestant ideology is the cause of a shared sense of spiritual anxiety ultimately leading to political disaster.
“The world is full of Christian ideas gone mad. This is only understandable if we recognize we live in a post-protestant age and not an atheist age,” Bottum said.
Bottum argued, citing influence from sociologist Max Weber and author Peter L. Berger’s “Sacred Canopy,” that our country has a deep spiritual anxiety and guilt throughout the social body influencing our politics.
“When the mainline protestants began to leave their denominations, they carried with them the Christian shape of moral ideas, even though the content changed,” Bottum said.
New content filling the Christian shape consists of new interpretations of the ideas of apocalypse, social ills and white privilege, he said. Bottum said that guilt stemming from the recognition of white privilege and similar ideas is from a religious impulse more than a social or economic one.
“If it’s all about social ills, then you know you are a good person if you were opposed to those social ills, if you were anti-racist, even if you don’t do anything, you’re convinced of your own salvation,” he said.
To support the claim that the U.S. has inherited Christian ideas in a Christian shape, Bottum discussed religious ideas with parallels to areligious social settings today.
“There’s an extraordinary point back in 1907. Walter Rauschenbusch, American theologian and key figure in the social gospel movement, listed six species of social sin that had crucified Christ and against which Christ runs,” he said.
These social ills were bigotry, ignorance of the uneducated, power of corruption, militarism and oppression. Bottum believes that revolts to these ills are now functioning in society without religious communities behind them.
“This is what happens when you have a mainline outlook that is broken free from all its prior constraints. Seeing the historical roots as post-protestant and understanding the spiritual hunger that has no outlet for them ― it helps us at least to begin to explain it,” said Bottum.
Bottum concluded that our politics are more religious than they were during the Great Awakening. He referred to our current moment as “The Great Awokening.”
Bottum took questions from the audience after the talk. Attendees asked about Christian Nationalism, ICE and his hopes for the future of the U.S.
“I see a lot of opportunity to tear it all down. I have hope; I have faith; but I see only the possibilities of tearing it all down and not reconstruction.”
CSGI hosts events for the Colorado Springs community. They aim to educate students and explore possible social foundations for a free, prosperous society, according to their website.
Around 60 people attended the event. The crowd was split between community members and students.
Photo by Medium.