The art of the public grovel : sexual sin and public confession in America / Susan Wise Bauer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bauer, Susan Wise.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex scandals--United States--History.

Sex scandals.

Politicians--Sexual behavior--United States--History.

Politicians.

Presidents--Sexual behavior--United States--History.

Presidents.

Confession--Social aspects--United States--History.

Confession.

Evangelicalism--United States.

Evangelicalism.

United States--Moral conditions.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (351 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Whether you are a politician caught carrying on with an intern or a minister photographed with a prostitute, discovery does not necessarily spell the end of your public career. Admit your sins carefully, using the essential elements of an evangelical confession identified by Susan Wise Bauer in The Art of the Public Grovel, and you, like Bill Clinton, just might survive. In this fascinating and important history of public confession in modern America, Bauer explains why and how a type of confession that first arose among nineteenth-century evangelicals has today become the required form for any successful public admission of wrongdoing--even when the wrongdoer has no connection with evangelicalism and the context is thoroughly secular. She shows how Protestant revivalism, group psychotherapy, and the advent of talk TV combined to turn evangelical-style confession into a mainstream secular rite. Those who master the form--Bill Clinton, Jimmy Swaggart, David Vitter, and Ted Haggard--have a chance of surviving and even thriving, while those who don't--Ted Kennedy, Jim Bakker, Cardinal Bernard Law, Mark Foley, and Eliot Spitzer--will never really recover. Revealing the rhetoric, theology, and history that lie behind every successful public plea for forgiveness, The Art of the Public Grovel will interest anyone who has ever wondered why Clinton is still popular while Bakker fell out of public view, Ted Kennedy never got to be president, and Law moved to Rome.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Contents:

pt. 1. The shift toward public confession

pt. 2. The age of public confession.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-322) and index.

ISBN:

9786612157424

9781282157422

1282157426

9781400830022

1400830028

OCLC:

438653476