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The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. By Doug Rossinow Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History New York: Columbia University Press,1998. x + 500 pp. $34.50 cloth; $18.50 paper.
The political and social upheaval of the 1960s fascinates American historians for a variety of reasons, not least because many of those historians came of age during the turbulent decade. Many see the era's rebellions as a decisive break from what came before and what came after. Doug Rossinow, only a child during the 1960s, challenges that view. He presents an important and rich reinterpretation of the decade's New Left, placing it squarely in the history of American politics and-important to Church History readers-- American religion.
At its heart, Rossinow's argument is a combination of philosophy psychology, and theology During the Cold War years, Americans-mainly white middle-class Americans-were overwhelmed by anxiety and alienation. Nuclear war threatened to wipe out their society. Postwar affluence and the growth of bureaucracies turned them into consumers rather than individuals. Technology made their world feel plastic, artificial. To deal with this anxiety and alienation, young Americans in the 1950s and early 1960s turned to existentialism, including the existential theology of Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These thinkers inspired a search for authenticity, for commitment and community, rather than consumption and conformity. Many of these young Americans...