I have an essay published in the current issue of The Cresset (a journal put out by Valparaiso University). It is entitled "The Disappointed Generation" and it concerns my father and his generation and how his generation differs from mine in terms of attachments to country and company and church. If you don't subscribe, you can also read the essay online here.
You can read the rest here.
Here is how it begins:
My father believed in his country, his company, and his church. Born in 1940, he was just the right age to revel in American strength. He missed the Great Depression but rode the wave of American economic vitality. Nourished on stories of the Second World War, he saw his country as powerful and good. As he reached adulthood, Protestant denominations, such as his own Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, were growing quickly and easily. His was a generation of faith in the rightness of the causes that filled their life.
Within a year of graduating from high school, my father went to work for the BF Goodrich tire company. He spent almost the rest of his life working there. He was a “company man,” embodying a belief in the rightness of American business. He did not just work for BF Goodrich; he believed in BF Goodrich, and he had good reason for his trust. At BF Goodrich, he had parlayed a high school education into a lifelong career. More than that, the company had given him a purpose. It gave him a mission: to work hard, to succeed, and to be a part of an important common enterprise.
Click here to read the rest.
4 comments:
thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing it!
You raise an interesting question about yourself. I don't know that it makes you less in that you don't believe in human institutions. The difference is that your father was brought to the place where you are, i.e. less, because the things he believe in were all temporal. You are simply beginning where his long journey brought him, to the end of all things human which is the only place that Christ truly meets us!
Thank you for this wonderful article. My own father is about 13 years older, between WWII and Korea, built his own business, and still works every day. I sent a link to the article to him because I knew he would appreciate it also...
Yes, wonderful article. As somebody who identifies with this older culture the modus I've come to is libertarianism, which in ways is older than the mid-century idealism of your dad's generation. Protestant fundamentalists used to have a healthy distrust of the government for example because the ’60s disaster had them turning to it hoping for law and order. Of course the state, people at work and churchmen have clay feet. Original sin. Catholics reach beyond all that to the church's infallible doctrine (a constitution without repeal as I like to say). Of course Vatican II (which did not make new definitions of doctrine) did a number on Roman Catholics, mimicking the mistakes of the now dying mainline.
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