Town Hall

What is the American Dream?

2010-04-03T18:15:38-08:00

The term was first used by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America which was written in 1931. He states: “The American Dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

In the United States’ Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers: “…held certain truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Might this sentiment be considered the foundation of the American Dream?

Were homesteaders who left the big cities of the east to find happiness and their piece of land in the unknown wilderness pursuing these inalienable Rights? Were the immigrants who came to the United States looking for their bit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their Dream? And what did the desire of the veteran of World War II - to settle down, to have a home, a car and a family - tell us about this evolving Dream? Is the American Dream attainable by all Americans? Would Martin Luther King feel his Dream was attained? Did Malcolm X realize his Dream?

Some say, that the American Dream has become the pursuit of material prosperity - that people work more hours to get bigger cars, fancier homes, the fruits of prosperity for their families - but have less time to enjoy their prosperity. Others say that the American Dream is beyond the grasp of the working poor who must work two jobs to insure their family’s survival. Yet others look toward a new American Dream with less focus on financial gain and more emphasis on living a simple, fulfilling life.

Thomas Wolfe said, “…to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him.”

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The Impact on Evangelical Ethics

2010-03-28T23:41:46-08:00

The Impact on Evangelical Ethics

What might be some of the consequences of the acceptance of the American Dream as a Christian story? How might this acceptance impact the shape and flavor of evangelical social ethics? In their book, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in American, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith explore the influence of the social and class location of American evangelicals on their social ethic as it applies to race and class. According to Emerson and Smith, the cultural tools in the toolbox of most white evangelicals are free will individualism, antistructuralism, and relationalism.24 These tools have produced what Smith calls a “personal influence strategy” for solving social relations and problems. In his book, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, Smith writes:

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American Dream and the conflation

2010-03-28T23:38:55-08:00

This essay will explore the relationship between the social and class location of a “typical” evangelical, and the personal and social ethical commitments which may ensue as a result of this location. In particular, I am interested in exploring the class assumptions of the American Dream and the conflation of the American Dream with American evangelicalism as it impacts the ethic of evangelicalism. I do so as a Christian social ethicist, living and working in an evangelical context as active participant and, hopefully, as helpful critic for transformation.

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The House Committees on Ways and Means

2010-03-28T23:35:15-08:00

The House Committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor, as well as the Senate Health Committee (the Senate Finance Committee has not yet presented its version), have come up with 1,000+ pages of health care reform. I was asked to turn those proposals into a two-minute segment on the CBS Early Show this morning.

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