The Fourth Great Awakening

...Fogel is correct in pointing out that a shift of religious conservatives into the Republican Party helped the GOP reach parity with Democrats...

...The problem for Fogel, however, is that he's less interested in these folks and their leaders (such as Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday) than he is in the modernists who advocated a new social gospel...

...Nor have we seen entire communities transformed in dramatic ways...

...Minority leaders need to stir up the pot to gain dues-paying members and organize their communities...

...It was their political dreams that were awakened...

...Congress has mandated that specific, accurate numbers be collected, but has not expressly legislated how it should be done...

...By the end of the 198o's, enthusiastic religion had about 60 million adherents, representing one-third of the electorate," he notes...

...Poor old Ben and Jerry have lost their ice-cream company, but on the bright side, they can now move in together and claim state benefits...

...Soon, no doubt, the first clone will be born to a gay couple in a clinic in Mexico or Tunisia, but one day he'll come to Texas or Maine and apply for a driver's license and no court is going to want to be the one that pronounces the poor clone a "non-person...

...Fogel writes about the "emergence of teehnophysio evolution...

...Because it was this social gospel crowd that had the political clout to create "the basis for the welfare state," provide "the ideological foundation and political drive" for labor and civil rights reforms, and lay the groundwork for the feminist agenda of the late 196o's and early 197o's...

...a sense of the mainstream of work and life...

...Next, he advocates that statisticians be given flexibility to determine the demographic techniques used, and that demographic snapshots be taken more often so that less will ride on the once-every-ten-years mega-count...

...Those difficult issues are properly dealt with in the private, not the public, realm...

...N Culture Vultures/Steyn (Continued from page 57) children has learned to keep its suitcase packed and a bundle of change-of-address cards on hand...

...By leaving the details up to the supposed experts at the Census Bureau--part of the Commerce Department, which is, of course, headed by a political appointee--Congress has allowed the party in power in the executive branch to do what it will with the count...

...a capacity for self-education...

...Skerry believes such dramatic confrontations are related more to minority power and rights issues than they are to the census itself...

...If anything sets our century apart from the past," he says, "it is this huge increase"from 41 years to 75 years--"in the longevity of the lower classes...

...an ethic of benevolence...

...For example, the social investments "that contributed most to unmeasured income were the construction of facilities to improve the supply of water, the cleaning up of the milk supply, the development of effective systems of quarantine, and the cleaning up of the slums...

...Fogel writes...

...On Sunday Junior's with Mommy and her lesbian wife, Monday with Grammy and Grampa from Mommy's first, non-gay marriage, Tuesday with Mommy's gay biological sperm donor, Wednesday with Mommy's lesbian's egg donor's boyfriend, Thursday with his turkey baster's mannfacturer's ex-wife, Friday with his shrink...

...N The Big Sleep Continues...

...It "provided much of the popular ideological foundation" for the American revolution, FRED BARNES is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and co-host of"The Beltway Boys" on the Fox News Channel...

...Which brings us to reawakening number four, which Fogel says began in the 196o's and blossomed in the 198o's and 199o's...

...a work ethic...

...Let the state decline to recognize any "partnerships" and treat us all as individuals from cradle to grave...

...He teaches at the University of Chicago and appears to know a lot about many, many things, including nutrition and its relation to body size...

...And don't think "redefining" ends there...

...This awakening-in the sense of enthusiastic revival meetings and mass conversions-took place only among traditional Protestants, dubbed fundamentalists...

...a vision of opportunity...

...an appreciation for quality...

...a strong family ethic...

...the capacity to focus and concentrate one's efforts...

...If this is matrimony in the 21st century, let us live free and let marriage die...

...In the end, what's valuable about Fogel's book is his eclectic view of what's had the greatest impact on the human condition...

...But it wasn't the Biblical faith of the social gospelers that was intensified...

...The fourth religious awakening of intense, emotional Christianity that Fogel cites as the source of the current distinctive era in polities hasn't really occurred, at least not in the United States...

...But he's persuaded me...

...But there's one big problem...

...Everything changes...

...No, it's certainly not the broader distribution of material resources...

...In fact, Fogel asserts that "biomedical measures" offer a more accurate assessment of gains in "material egalitarianism" than do conventional economic yardsticks...

...The second occurred The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism Robert William Fogel U~iversity of Chicago Press 320 pages / $25 REVIEWED BY Fred Barnes among Protestant sects, mostly in the North, and is identified with the antislavery movement and the desire to create a righteous land to which Jesus Christ would return in the Second Coming...

...H aving said all that, I liked The Fourth Great Reawakening and the Future of Egalitarianism enormously...

...Beyond that, everyone concerned should have "a more realistic appreciation of the limits of what the census can reasonably be expected to do...

...a thirst for knowledge...

...Though secular himself, he's interested in the role of religion in spurring historic changes in America...

...And in The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, he explains how religion and politics have interacted to produce four separate periods in American history, the last of them unfolding before us today...

...a sense of discipline...

...So let me propose a New Hampshire solution: Let gays have the same benefits as straights, and let it be...zip, nada, nothin...

...That theory holds that over the past 300 years, and mostly during the past century, humans have gained control over their environment--"a degree of control so great that it sets them apart not only from all other species but also from all previous generations of homo sapiens...

...a capacity to engage with diverse groups...

...First, Skerry argues Congress should give the bureau explicit directions about what it wants the census to demonstrate...

...In truth, this didn't happen often...

...Marriage has been so comprehensively trivialized we might as well put it out of its misery...

...This is an ambitious book, filled with smart insights, and it's fun to read...

...The point of the Vermont supreme court ruling was that whatever state benefits were accorded to heterosexual couples also had to be accorded to same-sex couples...

...Fogel's idea of economic history covers a broad array of factors that I hadn't thought of as economic...

...And who's now gaining more leisure time, another important immaterial commodity...

...So, what should be done...

...The social gospel advocates, far more secular and worldly, were on the other side in that struggle...

...IN The American Spectator _9 Ju I y/Au g ~ s t 2, o o o 93...

...Rather, he says the fourth awakening's goal of self-realization for all mankind will be met if these 15 "immaterial commodities" are imbibed by people all over the world: % sense of purpose...

...self-esteem...

...Too bad it hasn't happened recently...

...All these benefits, of course, "accrued disproportionately to those with modest incomes...

...The biggest political achievement of the fundamentalists was Prohibition...

...There's only one surefire way I know to distribute spiritual resources across the globe and that's through a real, unmistakable awakening that reaches across all classes and countries...

...As a result of an increased food supply and improved sanitation, the average body size of humans has increased 5 ~ percent and their life span has grown lOO percent, while the "capacity of their vital organ systems" has improved greatly...

...At its core, the census problem is a problem of legislative delegation...

...We've already had a grandparents' "visitation rights" case before the federal Supreme Court, but who knows who else will want a piece of the action by the time marriage has been "redefined...

...charging racism in the census is a low-cost, easy way to do it...

...The first religious revival erupted in the American colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century and is associated with New England preacher Jonathan Edwards and English evangelist George Whitefield...

...Fogel starts to get in trouble with the .. third awakening, which lasted from R obert William Fogel is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who has written brilliantly about American slavery and the impact of railroad building in the nineteenth century...

...Fogel argues their goals often coincided with those of the fundamentalists...

...Skerry writes that "to accept the need for [census] data should also be to accept as inevitable both their limitations, and the constant political maneuvering that goes into their collection, interpretation, and publication...

...This will guarantee that the census remains contentious, since more likely than not the court challenges will be flamed as an issue of rights--the right to be counted, the right to be represented, e t c . - rather than one of technical public policy...

...We haven't seen the widespread, noisy conversions of earlier awakenings...

...He offers a few suggestions on how this might be done, but they are lame: more mentoring, better day care and prenatal care, increased funding for education, etc...

...Some gays have already argued that a ban on human cloning infringes on their reproductive rights...

...These improvements, Fogel insists, have aided the poor far more than the rich...

...It also spawned the women's suffrage movement and the initial effort to ban liquor...

...Statistics in and of themselves cannot effectively promote racial harmony or empowerment, and reducing the undercount will not solve lingering feelings of inequality...

...a capacity to resist the lure of hedonism...

...Not the rich, who work longer than ever...

...These are fine characteristics, but they have as much to do with the Enlightenment as they do with religion...

...history on his daily dose of Prozac and/or Ritalin, which seems to work pretty well, at least until the day the kid forgets to take it and guns down his schoolyard...

...The initial awakenings are ones we all know...

...And if the shrink's not enough, he can join the rest of the most medicated generation of children in U.S...

...He contends the theory of the social gospelers that "improvement in material conditions naturally leads to spiritual improvement" is wrong...

...I think he's on the high side with this estimate, but the real problem is that the embrace of orthodox Christianity by millions of middle-class Americans during the past two decades doesn't truly constitute a reawakening...

...Another route is policy making by litigation, or going to court...

...Even religious leaders who have called repeatedly for a reawakening don't believe it has happened, and they're better judges than Fogel...

...a sense of community...

...Instead, many Christians were either 92 July~August 2000 _9 The American Spectator returning to the faith they had as children or young adults or dropping out of liberal mainline churches and joining conservative evangelical congregations...

...No matter what the Census Bureau decides on adjustment for 20o0, the outcome will most certainly be challenged legally, as it has in years past...

...But a lot of other people shifted as well: men, Southerners, conservative Catholics, gun owners, prolifers...

...Fogel's ease for a fourth reawakening is further weakened by the fact that none of the "spiritual resources" which he says are paramount now and must be redistributed include faith in Jesus Christ as one's personal savior...

...If you wish to be married in your church, good luck to you, but it won't affect your civil status, your tax status, or anything else...

...Today there is more "spiritual estrangement" than ever before, which is why international sharing of spiritual resources is the task Fogel assigns to this era...

...roughly 189o to 193o...

...What we have seen, though, during this supposed religious awakening is the continued secularization of American society and marginalization of religion as a force in the popular culture...