Chris Lehmann

This book takes as its starting point the fight between Oprah and Franzen, so, through no real fault of its own, it is now a mighty dated attack on mass culture and those who defend it. Of course, it's an intervention, not a lasting book. So that's okay. But it is funny to read someone defending Franzen as the great hope of the avant-garde.

Lehmann summarizes some of the better American cultural critics (e.g., MacDonald, Greenberg), summarizes some of the horrible guff that people write in defense of mass culture (particularly amusing in the case of Edward Shils), and doesn't really make much of an argument himself. He does make a few statements, that, sadly, are still relevant: i) that cultural distinctions have been emptied of meaning, but overloaded with political importance. That will be familiar to anyone who has clicktivist friends, as I do. I mean, we got angry about the police murdering young black men, but nowhere near as angry as we're getting that 'Selma' didn't get enough Academy Award nominations, right? ii) that individual taste and discrimination are the bedrock of efficacious democracies, but making distinctions and showing evidence of taste has somehow come to be seen as deeply anti-democratic; iii) that the rise of cultural studies went along with the adjunctification of the academic workforce, and cultural studies was poorly equipped to complain about it; iv) simple, easy to digest mass culture is very suitable for a work force that does nothing but work and consume.

These are all worthwhile points.

The problem is that Lehmann really doesn't seem to be able to read. He puts me in the extremely unpleasant position of defending Dave Eggers, whose first book was in large part a self-implicating attack on nihilism, self-regard, and cynicism. Lehmann reads it as affirming all of those things. He repeats this pattern enough times in this little pamphlet to undermine his own authority to make the large-scale pronouncements of i-iv) above. Too bad.

Also, I realized as I was reading this book that it and similar texts are destined to age poorly: Lehmann is essentially attacking bad work, which nobody watches or reads anymore. I'm glad someone attacked it, but I didn't really need the attack. On the other hand 'subversive' cultural studies types write polemics against *good* work, for being elitist or outdated or whatever. Because the good work will survive, so will the subversive cultural studies critiques of that work--no matter how bad the critique might be. That is rather depressing.… (más)

An exploration of the associations between American capitalism and Christianity.

The author develops the thesis of what he calls the "money cult," a symbiotic and mutually reinforcing relationship between certain tenets of American Protestantism and its developing capitalistic economy. He looks fondly upon the Puritans as having a more communitarian practice; he explores what he deems the degeneration of this culture as it moves toward the more rugged individualism of the later colonial era and the first and second Great Awakenings, the latter of which especially promoted primitivism and emphasized the importance of hard work to get ahead. Mormonism and Pentecostalism are especially emphasized in terms of their religious and capitalist associations; much is made of New Thought in the 19th century. In the 20th century the author sees the continuation of this "money cult" ethos in the work surrounding Bryan and especially Peale; the work ends with a blistering critique of the American capitalist spirit suffusing the Left Behind series.

The book does well at advancing its thesis in its general sentiment: American Protestantism has profoundly shaped the American capitalist economy and itself has been strongly influenced by it as well. What passes for "Christian" economic philosophy among American Christians need not be the only way that the ethos of the NT is understood, and the book explains how the American philosophy developed.

At times, however, the author seems to be stretching the evidence. His use of "Gnostic" is a bit baffling; he uses it for just about everything, from the Cane Ridge revival to Mary Baker Eddy. Granted, the term is so expansive and flexible that it can mean just about anything, but generally maintains the idea of salvation by knowledge at its core, and not necessarily askance at institutions. A more precise use of philosophical terms would do better at not undermining his argument, since there are more discontinuities than continuity between, say, revivalism and Christian science. And in some details there was a bit of confusion, much of which is likely due to the author's lack of experience in the groups in mind (e.g. dispensational premillennialism pre-dates Pentecostalism and significantly influenced all of Evangelicalism, not just Pentecostalism). This is not surprising considering the breadth of the project.

Nevertheless, an eye opening work worthy of consideration.… (más)