BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MAY 22, 2000 ISSUE
BOOKS Can Religion Make Life Less Hellish? THE FOURTH GREAT AWAKENING AND THE FUTURE OF EGALITARIANISM By Robert William Fogel Chicago 383pp $25 Robert William Fogel's ambitious new book, The Fourth Great Awakening, is well-timed, coming during a Presidential campaign in which both major candidates advocate more reliance on ''faith-based institutions'' such as churches, synagogues, and mosques. The Nobel prize-winning economist has a similar idea. He puts his thesis across in a wide-ranging, often insightful book that weaves religion together with economics, politics, technology, and what he has coined ''technophysio evolution.'' To summarize, Fogel hopes that the current upwelling of religious fervor, which he calls the Fourth Great Awakening, can be harnessed to distribute ''spiritual resources'' such as self-esteem more evenly across society. Fogel says that although society is richer today than in centuries past, too many people lead hollow lives. Moral crisis, he argues, ''is the hallmark of our age and the greatest threat to the survival of our society.'' But here's the odd part. Unlike most people who call for spiritual uplift--Al Gore and George W. Bush, for example--Fogel is not a religious person. He forewarns readers in his introduction that he is a ''secular child'' of the technocratic 20th century. The fascination and frustration of this book is in watching Fogel grapple with this apparent contradiction. For religious people, life's purpose is to glorify God. Bettering society may be a means to that end but is never the end in itself. Fogel reverses the order. Although he never says it in so many words, it's obvious that for him, belief in God is useful primarily in getting people to better themselves and society--promoting ''self-realization,'' ''egalitarianism,'' and what he antiseptically calls ''the redistribution of immaterial resources.'' In short, even though Fogel drenches his book with talk of spiritual uplift, this volume will not be popular with the Christian Coalition. For the author, ''immaterial resources'' don't come from God. They're secular virtues such as a sense of purpose, a family ethic, and ''an appreciation for quality.'' Fogel wants to make common cause with religious institutions because they help provide people with a sense of purpose. But his distaste for religion becomes apparent when he refers to God blandly as ''a transcendent being,'' and when he reassures his readers that there's little danger that the government, by mobilizing religious groups to bring meals to the elderly and so on, ''will inadvertently promote organized religion in America.'' Fogel might have done better to soft-pedal his prescriptions and stick with history. The strength of the book is its eclectic and idiosyncratic analysis, which sweeps in everything from Whig politics to the intellectual impact of Charles Darwin to long-term trends in height and weight to the religious attitudes of John D. Rockefeller. Cross-disciplinary historical research has been the hallmark of the career of the 73-year-old University of Chicago economist. Fogel won his Nobel for rigorous studies such as one that found that the railroads were not singly responsible for opening up the West. He's best known for his 1974 book with Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, which argued that slavery was an economically thriving institution on the eve of the Civil War and--most controversially--that slaves were not as mistreated as many people assumed. Fogel writes that The Fourth Great Awakening grew out of his study of slavery and the religious movement against it. He became intrigued by the cycles of evangelism in U.S. history--''great awakenings'' to historians--and how they spawned political movements. As Fogel tells it, the First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and ripened into the American Revolution. The second began around 1800 and spawned the antislavery movement that precipitated the Civil War. The third began at the end of the 19th century, leading to the Social Gospel movement, the rise of the 20th century welfare state, and a secular technocracy made up of degreed professionals like Fogel himself. A conservative fourth awakening that began around 1960 is just now entering its political phase, Fogel argues. This construct has been tried before, with mixed success. History resists easy categorization. And to describe today's level of religiosity in America as a ''great awakening'' is something of a stretch. An honest-to-God great awakening, such as that of the mid-1700s, is a social earthquake. Historian Richard L. Bushman once wrote that the First Great Awakening was ''more like the civil rights demonstrations, the campus disturbances, and the urban riots of the 1960s combined.'' That said, it's interesting to follow Fogel as he presents today's political conflicts as a clash between two great movements, one that's dying and one that's being born. As Fogel sees it, the reform movement that grew out of the aging Third Great Awakening blamed society as the source of sin. This, he says, undermined personal responsibility for bad behavior. Concludes Fogel: ''[T]he Social Gospelers' effort to reform human nature, to crush evil, and to create God's kingdom on earth through income redistribution has failed.'' In reaction to that failure, says Fogel, the religious right has risen up in an evangelical, populist campaign that stresses morality and personal responsibility. The conflict between this new religious movement and the old, secularized one has been heightened by the divisive impacts of new technologies and economic change. The result, Fogel says, is that, ''Americans are more deeply divided and angry with each other today than at any time since the 1850s.'' Fogel is still optimistic. He expects material and spiritual inequality will narrow, families will strengthen, crime and corruption will fall, women will get ahead, poor nations will catch up, and ethnic and racial harmony will grow. That would be wonderful. One is tempted to say: ''From his mouth to the ear of a transcendent being.'' But this forecast comes in an afterword that makes almost no mention of religion. Fogel seems to presume that soon, the Fourth Great Awakening will lose its religious character and become largely an ethical and political movement. In Fogel's future, the legacy of religious evangelism will be voluntarism and a commitment to equality of opportunity for all. It's no surprise that the secular Fogel doesn't use the language of a preacher. What's more surprising is that he doesn't sound much like an economist. For a scholar whose career has emphasized hard data, Fogel gets pretty airy. ''Today, people are increasingly concerned with what life is all about,'' he writes. He argues that with their material needs amply satisfied, people will focus on achieving ''self-realization'' and helping others achieve it. ''Those rich in spiritual resources can help those who are spiritually deprived by counseling them, providing spiritual companionship and moral support, informing and teaching those who are deprived about existing opportunities and procedures, and helping raise their self-esteem.'' Maybe so. Maybe the New Agers will inherit the earth. But the energy these days seems to be with new groups like Vision America, a coalition of pastors that opposes abortion, gambling, gay rights, and pornography. Self-realization is not high on Vision America's agenda. Fogel seems to have recreated the ''secular religion'' advocated by philosopher John Dewey. But for people who like the old-time religion, the secular kind just doesn't do the trick. By PETER COY Coy is associate economics editor. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS Can Religion Make Life Less Hellish? PHOTO: Cover, ``The Fourth Great Awakening'' INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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