This little essay is from my Modern U.S. Social and Intellectual History class. The essay was an exam we took after reading Robert Fogel’s The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism.
Outline and assess Fogel’s presentation of the origins and consequences of the purported awakenings, with particular attention to the third and fourth.
Robert Fogel’s arguments that four “awakenings” are the reasons for the dramatic changes in American history are sweeping and simple. Fogel presents four cycles of time that end with some sort of dramatic change in American politics and society. Each cycle last about one hundred years and generally, the next cycle begins before the preceding one ends (Fogel, 9).
The first great awakening takes place between 1730 and 1830 and its emphasis—according to Fogel—witnessed the weakening of predestination and the rise of ethic benevolence and the belief that sinners may be predestined for salvation. These traits lead to the American Revolution and the want for self-determination and a need to break away from the tyranny of the British crown. The religious component of the first great awakening challenged the Calvinist point of view that only those whom God chose could find redemption. The new church leaders also accused the Calvinists of being greedy for power and luxury. Fogel states, that while the religious portion of this period was “latent, incipient, or muted, it laid the basis for the frontal assault on orthodoxy that emerged during the Second Great Awakening” (Fogel, 20). The political aspect of the first awakening erodes away the British authority on the colonies. With constant accusations of political and moral corruption, a need for new desirable qualities arose. The birth of the revolution allowed an establishing of a legitimate authority, the breaking down of friction between the colonies and allowed a freedom of thought that broke with the traditional Calvinists. Fogel presents his thesis for this book as technological change that brings on the need for a religious revival. Yet, the first awakening does not present a technological change but a change of ideas fostered from the Enlightenment and a questioning of strict puritanical ideas. This awakening seems to fall short of the argument that technology ripens the revival.
The second great awakening begins in the year 1800 and lasts until 1920. The revival puts further distance between predestination and the ability for anyone to obtain God’s grace through inner and outer perseverance against sin. One cause for this was the dawning of the a new millennium and what probably stems from a fear tactic that the God’s vengeance will destroy those who did not accept his virtue. God’s virtue included the cessation of all consumption of alcohol, the rise of the abolitionist movement and the need to limit the number of Catholics entering into the country (Fogel, 21). The abolitionist movement sees an immediate change with their movement for change. The Civil War mobilizes and strikes at the heart of slave states to free the blacks from their Southern owners. Social reforms grew out of the second awakening as well. The need for education for everyone, child labor laws and the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement also take hold. The crowning achievements for the second awakening are the three amendments that end slavery, giving citizenship to former slaves and giving them the right to vote. The fight for civil equality for ex-slaves might have gone further if the focus did not shift to Darwinism and the growing urban crisis (Fogel, 22).
The second awakening comes at a time when the country goes through the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the need to better one’s self through outward works of goodness to reach salvation. This seems to tie closely to what Fogel means by technology requires social change. With the advent of new machinery to accomplish menial tasks then why, does a plantation owner need slaves? That logic follows along with the need to better ones self in the eyes of the Lord. Salvation came from good deeds and changing the society from the evils of slavery was one way to go about it.
The third great awakening starts up around 1890 and has not quite ended yet, but Fogel gives a date of 1970. A clear cut erupts between the ideas that poverty was a reason for sin. The growing unrest in the urban centers of America draws the attention of churches. The social reformers saw the cities as centers for corruption, crime, drunkenness, prostitution and graft that could have infected the entire society. Charles Darwin strikes at the heart of the creation of man with his theories on evolution that challenges the very existence of God’s word. The shift to a scientific view of the Bible and its subsequent interpretation that it was nothing more than a historical document sends the churches into strong battle to who was right and who was wrong.
The rise of industry in the cities of America brought in new waves of immigrants who were not equal in the eyes of the Evangelists. The living conditions, corruption and graft became the focal points of cleaning up America in order to gain God’s favor. This view point extended from the second awakening and found a hearty root in the Social Gospel Movement, that emphasized that if salvation was what one wanted then the society as a whole would have to change for the better and it fell to everyone to correct society. Their solution to these problems included the redistribution of wealth, reforms to end city corruption, the education of children and limiting child labor, prohibition of alcohol, and women’s right to vote. These changes culminate into the welfare state.
The sort of freethinking that the third awakening encourages seems to lead away from the idea that the churches created the need to right the wrongs. The shift away from the individual to better ones self, to the collective society takes away from individual achievement. Once the individual was removed from the equation of change, the church’s hold on people withers. Fogel points out that the leaders of the churches do shelter themselves from society (Fogel, 25). Technology and science foster free thinkers, who do not hold themselves accountable to the confines of churches. These educated people perceived a need for change from more economic viewpoints than Godly ones.
The fourth great awakening picks up in the 1960s and continues today. The civil rights movements to bring equality and prosperity to blacks and women picks up here where the third awakening left off. Education becomes the forerunner to the changes in society that need to take place. Better educated people means more money earned and that then creates more time to spend on other activities. The focus of the fourth awakening takes shape after World War II. With dramatic increases in salaries, life expectancy increases and the number of hours one devotes to work shortening—by 40% in 2040—(Fogel, 188-189), the need to find a outlet has and will occur. For Fogel, the rebirth of religion as a social sandbox to cope with the changes in technology and the world around us will grow (Fogel, 204). In order to achieve this, Fogel believes that the education opportunities need to expand to include all those who would only receive a high school degree. Fogel states,
the main solution to the relative stagnation in the wages of high school trained workers is to reduce their supply by educating more of them for higher-level technical and professional jobs. Given the rate of decline in the supply of good jobs for those with only high school training, an appropriate target is a doubling in three decades of the share of those receiving bachelor’s degrees and a similar increase in high-level technical training (Fogel, 216).
With better-educated people, the demand for better salaries will increase and for Fogel the time spent on leisure activities will increase dramatically. What does not seem clear in Fogel’s presentation of the fourth awakening revolves around whom or what will be doing the tasks that the better educated do not want to do? Fogel never clearly defines if technology will completely take over the mundane jobs and chores to leave us with the recreation time to deal with life’s social issues. Fogel also seems to suggest that technology and religion will learn to live together. This does not seem possible given the state of arguments over creationism and evolution, stem-cell research and its retrieval from unborn babies to name a couple. Better education seems to push people away from religion and it seems that people who wish to change society do so out of some sort of need than a mandate from the pulpit.
Fogel’s book while rich in historical and empirical data makes certain assumptions about how the future will look. Looking into the future does not fit into the job description of a historian. By the year 2040, I will be 70 years old and certain that I will have lots of time on my hands. The intervening years are what will shape me into Fogel’s model or not.
