Finding Hope in the Age of Melancholy by David Awbrey

David Awbrey, a journalist and author of Finding Hope in the Age of Melancholy, characterizes Western society since the Renaissance as being in a downward spiral, so that despite personal and political liberty, Americans are discontent with their lives, suffering from a “lack of organizing mission in life, they feel a void where there should be a core of values.” (1999, 21) The Protestant work ethic that encouraged Americans to deny themselves and sacrifice for the future has morphed into “rampant consumerism based on immediate gratification, an insatiable appetite for material goods, power, pleasure, and a ‘he who dies with the most toys, wins’ mentality.” (1999, 23)
Seeking “moral resonance,” he began a study of religion that culminated in a rekindled faith in God’s grace and compassion as well as the belief that humans are best nourished in communities. Declaring the United States in the late twentieth century has a deteriorating social infrastructure, exampled by lagging voter turnout and declining memberships in civic organization, Awbrey calls for “renewed social activism by religious people. Faced with the failure of the secular experts to solve pressing issues of poverty and moral decay, many Americans are reconnecting community with spirituality.” (1999, 249)
John Roth, author of Private Needs, Public Selves: Talk about Religion in America, agrees with Awbrey’s sentiments:” …the things we care about deep down pivot around our yearnings to make sense of what is happening to us, our desire to discern what is good and right, and our need for meaningful goals to which we can commit ourselves wholeheartedly.” (1997, 121) Roth also cites a connection between these sentiments and what he terms religion’s defining themes: “sens...

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...ially to communities’ social lives, issue advocacy, and networks or referral systems involved in cooperative church and government support levels. Not only meeting the spiritual needs of church members, local congregations meet civic needs as well, and sharing religions values as a nonprofit sector.

Works Cited

Awbrey, David S. 1999. Finding hope in the age of melancholy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Bass, Dorothy C., ed. 1997. Practicing our faith: A way of Life for a searching people. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Roberts, D. Bruce, and Robert E. Reber. 2000. What might the future be? In A Lifelong call to learn: Approaches to continuing education for church leaders, eds. Robert E. Reber and D. Bruce Roberts, 291-295. Nashville: Abingdon.
Roth, John K. 1997. Private Needs, Public Selves: Talk about Religion in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.