Choking on Pink Ribbons - Barbara Ehrenreich on Positive Thinking
A very relevant book review appeared in this past weekend's NY Times, of Barbara Ehrenreich's (she of Nickel and Dimed-fame) forcefully-titled Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. The book was apparently inspired by Ehrenreich's own bout with breast cancer, and not surprisingly, it would seem that her investigations led her straight to... the church. A few choice quotes (ht VH):
What started as a 19th-century response to dour Calvinism has, over the years, turned equally oppressive, Ehrenreich writes. Stacks of best sellers equate corporate success with a positive attitude. Flimsy medical research claims that cheerfulness can improve the immune system. In a growing number of American churches, confessions of poverty or distress amount to heresy. America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.
This mystical positivity seeped into the American megachurches, as celebrity pastors became motivational speakers in robes. In one of the great untold stories of American religion, the proto-Calvinist Christian right — with its emphasis on sin and self-discipline — has lately been replaced by a stitched-together faith known as “prosperity gospel,” which holds that God wants believers to be rich.
“Where is the Christianity in all of this?” Ehrenreich asks. “Where is the demand for humility and sacrificial love for others? Where in particular is the Jesus who said, ‘If a man sue you at law and take your coat, let him have your cloak also?’ ” Ehrenreich is right, of course, in her theological critique. But she misses a chance to dig deeper. I have spent some time in prosperity churches, and as Milmon F. Harrison points out in “Righteous Riches,” his study of one such church, this brand of faith cannot be explained away as manipulation by greedy, thieving preachers. Millions of Americans — not just C.E.O.’s and megapastors but middle-class and even poor people — feel truly empowered by the notion that through the strength of their own minds alone they can change their circumstances. This may be delusional and infuriating. But it is also a kind of radical self-reliance that is deeply and unchangeably American.
What started as a 19th-century response to dour Calvinism has, over the years, turned equally oppressive, Ehrenreich writes. Stacks of best sellers equate corporate success with a positive attitude. Flimsy medical research claims that cheerfulness can improve the immune system. In a growing number of American churches, confessions of poverty or distress amount to heresy. America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.This mystical positivity seeped into the American megachurches, as celebrity pastors became motivational speakers in robes. In one of the great untold stories of American religion, the proto-Calvinist Christian right — with its emphasis on sin and self-discipline — has lately been replaced by a stitched-together faith known as “prosperity gospel,” which holds that God wants believers to be rich.
“Where is the Christianity in all of this?” Ehrenreich asks. “Where is the demand for humility and sacrificial love for others? Where in particular is the Jesus who said, ‘If a man sue you at law and take your coat, let him have your cloak also?’ ” Ehrenreich is right, of course, in her theological critique. But she misses a chance to dig deeper. I have spent some time in prosperity churches, and as Milmon F. Harrison points out in “Righteous Riches,” his study of one such church, this brand of faith cannot be explained away as manipulation by greedy, thieving preachers. Millions of Americans — not just C.E.O.’s and megapastors but middle-class and even poor people — feel truly empowered by the notion that through the strength of their own minds alone they can change their circumstances. This may be delusional and infuriating. But it is also a kind of radical self-reliance that is deeply and unchangeably American.Labels: Books, Church, DZ, Psychology
posted by DZ at
3:56 PM
6 Comments:
I'm maybe gonna catch a little heat for this, but this is a hobby-horse (hopefully not a high one) for me: radical self-reliance is NOT American. It's human. It is very easy for us (paradoxically) to point the finger at ourselves, pining for the superficial cultural differences of "the other." Remember, though, that it was a first century Jew (not a 21st century American) who asked Jesus, "What must I do to be saved?"
This really does look like an interesting book. An interesting part of the Calvinism part is the "Protestant work ethic" we all learned about in business school.
You know you are one of the elect if you are living a holy life and you are successful. Fascinating tie-in with Calvinism and the prosperity gospel.
Someone once told me that Puritan are only good reading if they are either in prison or near death. All the trivial nonsense gets cast away.
I should say, for the record, that I completely agree with Ehrenreich about superficial positivity undermining us...if The Secret was so possible, what's stopping us? Thetans?
I don't know...I wonder if Wesley and the huge Arminian/Revivalist influence of the 19th century played a bigger role in shaping today's American religious landscape. The heirs of the Puritans were all Unitarians by the Revolutionary War.
Of course it's Thetans, Nick. Duh.
I don't think I am giving you heat about the whole cultural vs. universal locus of sunny you-can-do-it optimism. You're right that it is in one sense universal.
But every culture in every age latches on to certain aspects of human sin and exacerbates them further. (Each having its own besetting weaknesses.) So I don't think it's actually a conflict to say that the problem of "reliance on self" is both universal and also made that much worse by America's own distinctive national mythology -- it's culture.
We can see this sort of thing in Christian communities. The desire to "pole vault over Calvary on the way to Pentecost" (for example) is universal. But it's also an especially besetting weakness of Pentecostal churches. The culture of that communities makes it much easier to fall into that.
And of course each culture and every church in fact has its own besetting cultural weaknesses.
It's the damn Americans, no, it's the damn Calvinists, no, it's the damn Pentecostals, no, it's the damn Calvinist Puritan American Pentecostals. All I know for sure is it's them, them, them.
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