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Comment on Prof. Carter's Paper: ‘The Idea of Progress in Most Recent American Protestant Thought, 1930–1960’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Georg G. Iggers
Affiliation:
Dillard University

Extract

Neither a theologian nor a church historian, I approach my task as a discussant of a paper on “The Idea of Progress in Most Recent Protestant Thought” with a great deal of hesitation. Nevertheless, there are parallels between the development of thought about history among Protestant theologians and American historians since the early nineteen-thirties.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1963

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References

1. American Historical Review, XXXVII (1931–1932), 221–236.

2. Ibid., XXXIX (1933–1934), 219–231; cf. Ibid., “That Noble Dream.” Ibid., XLI (1935–1936), 74–87; written with Alfred Vagts, “Currents of Thought in Historiography,” Ibid., XLII (1936–1937), 460–485.

3. “Concerning Recent Trends in the Theory of Historiography,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XVI (1955), 506517.Google Scholar As Prof. Mandelbaum points out, American philosophers have been less unanimous in reaching relativisitic conclusions. For them and for their British colleagues, the question of subjectivism vs. scientific objectivity has remained a vital topi of debate. Cf. also Theories of History, Patrick Gardiner, ed. (Glencoe, III., 1959)Google Scholar and the recently founded periodical History and Theory.

4. An exception to this is perhaps the relatively optimistic presidential address By Pay, Sidney, “The Idea of Progress,” American Historical Review, LII (19461947), 231246.Google Scholar

5. “Written History as an Act of Faith,” p. 220.

6. “Introduction” to Bury, J. B., The Idea of Progress (New York, 1932), p. xl.Google Scholar

7. “The Twentieth Century Enlightenment,” American Political Science Review, XLIX (1955), 321341Google Scholar; also Strout, Cushing, The Pragmatic Revolt in American History. Carl Becker and Charles Beard (New Haven, 1958).Google Scholar

8. Cf. Detachment and the Writing of History. Essays and Letters of Carl Lotus Becker, ed. Snyder, Phil L. (Ithaca, 1958).Google Scholar

9. Cf. Swart, Koenraad, “The Idea of Decadence in the Second Empire,” The Review of Politics, XXIII (1961), 7792.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Journal of the History of Ideas, XIX (1958), 211.Google Scholar

11. But the popularity of Toynbee in the years after the second war need not necessarily be interpreted as an expression of the breakdown of confidence among Americans in their future. Toynbee's very popularity may have lain, as Prof. Carter also suggests, in his note of hope for our world. For behind his verbose and grandiose system, there resided not only the gloomy realization of the dangers faced by modern civilization, but also the promise that disaster might be avoided if a response could be found to the challenge of the situation. In his post World War II writings, Toyabee had regained his confidence in the West and in the meaningfulness of history which had been lacking in the first six volumes of The Study of History. The danger of the total obliteration of man by nuclear weapons was real but so was the promise of the meaningful growth coming out of the encounter of the “World and the West.” The crisis, Toynbee believed, was spiritual in essence; but the response he proposed seemed to depend much less on the grace of God, as some of his critics have implied, than on actions in the very material realms of international relations and of aid to the underdeveloped countries.

12. Cf. Clarke Chambers, op. cit.; Sarnoff, David, “The Fabulous Future,” Fortune, 01., 1955, pp. 8283, 114ff.Google Scholar; Robert Sherwood, “There is no Alternative to Peace,” Ibid., July, 1955, pp. 84–85, 152ff; also the February, 1951 issue dedicated to “U.S.A. The Permanent Revolution.”

13. New York, 1955.

14. Fortune, 12, 1955, pp. 104–5, 214ff.Google Scholar

15. This address was published as a brochure (New York, 1959).

16. Pp. 217–218.

17. “The Twentieth Century Enlightenment,” p. 333.