American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell
American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell
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American Awakening
Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time

Author: Joshua Mitchell

Narrator: Chris Abell

Unabridged: 7 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/17/2020


Synopsis

In American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell compares today’s secular politics of identity—skin tone, gender, and sexuality—to the religious awakenings of America’s past. The book asks where the clerisy of identity politics came from, how identity politics claimed a death grip on liberalism, and how can it be defeated.We are living in the midst of an American Awakening, without God and without forgiveness. The first two Awakenings brought religious renewal; the third—the social gospel movement and its aftermath (1880–1910)—invoked the authority of religion to bring about political and social transformation, but lost sight of Christianity along the way.The Awakening through which we are now living comprehends politics through the categories of religion without recognizing it, has no place for the God who judges or the God who forgives, and has brought America to a dead end, beyond which no one can see. Identity politics renders judgment not based on sins of omission and commission, but on the publicly visible, unalterable attributes that precede whatever citizens might do or leave undone. Identity politics offers no forgiveness for transgressions, because they are irredeemable. Liberal politics was once concerned with working together to build a common world. Identity politics has transformed politics. It has turned politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering.For the moment, the irredeemable scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, on whom will innocent victims turn their cathartic rage? White women? Black men?Identity politics is the antiegalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged. If religious revivals are understood as collective efforts to redeem a stained world, then identity politics is an American religious revival—this time around, without God.

About Joshua Mitchell

Joshua Mitchell is a professor of political theory at Georgetown University. Author of four books, most recently, Tocqueville in Arabia, Professor Mitchell has also written extensively on identity politics. In 2005, he was on the start-up team for Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. From 2008–10, he took leave from Georgetown, and was the acting chancellor of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. He lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jonathan on January 31, 2021

A qualified 5 stars. Well-written, dense but able to be understood, with informative endnotes and copious citations. I highly doubt you'll find many bite-sized quotes to share... instead there are in-depth arguments and hard-hitting paragraphs. I think the majority of Mitchell's conclusions are spot......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on May 04, 2021

Mitchell, Georgetown University professor of political theory, has written a well learned, thoroughly conservative, study that engages the hop-topic of identity politics, the opioid crisis, Covid-19, as well as a host of other issues. It also serves as a commentary of sorts on Tocqueville's Democrac......more

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on April 13, 2021

Just finished “American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time” by Joshua Mitchell.  He argues that there have been four Great Awakenings in American history: A.) First Great Awakening (1730-1740s) — the church didn’t need to be reformed, but revived. IOW, the church was dead b......more

Goodreads review by Drew on April 15, 2021

Although identity politics is the main topic of the book, I thought the secondary topic of "addiction" was the most impactful. The discussion of identity politics was good but not exceptional, and much has been written about this area already. In contrast, by utilizing the principle of addiction and......more

Goodreads review by Drtaxsacto on February 09, 2024

There are few books that I read in a year which I would describe as profound, but this one is one of them. Mitchell, who is a political philosopher at Georgetown begins with some basic and seemingly disparate premises which I will describe later but his basic thoughts are on the consequences of what......more


Quotes

“Mitchell’s American Awakening has arrived on the scene to shake things up. No one has looked as deeply into the twisted soul of today’s ‘identity politics.’ Yet Mitchell is also outspoken in arguing that reconciliation with the descendants of America’s slaves must be at the heart of the nation’s political agenda. An original and mesmerizing book.” Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism

“Joshua Mitchell looks at what everyone else is looking at and sees what no one else sees. It’s an extraordinary gift, and thanks to it this book amounts to a kind of key to the times we are living in. It reveals that the problems we face run even deeper than we might imagine, but also highlights some surprising reasons for hope.” Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs

“American Awakening is essential reading. Joshua Mitchell exposes the spiritual disorders that are paralyzing public life. An ersatz politics of innocence has replaced our liberal politics of competence.” R. R. Reno, editor of First Things