Word: rifkin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...values and interpretations, both the Eastern religious-humanistic psychologies and the Pentecosal movement challenge the prevailing scientific-secular-liberal orthodoxy. Liberalism is founded on the notion of progress, specifically a bigger and tastier economic pie each year, made possible by the ever-expanding industrial machine. But now, according to Rifkin...
DESPITE EXTENSIVE documentation, Rifkin's argument suffers from a lack of clarity and a dose of wishful thinking. According to his model of America's two Great Awakenings, the Christian revival movement of the 1730s and 1820s, charismatic preachers first break the hold of the established orthodoxy through a return to the core religion of estatic experience, and then the theologians construct a new doctrinal synthesis. The process is like pushing Humpty Dumpty off the church wall so he cracks and his yolk runs down the block and then gathering it all up and making scrambled eggs for the congregation...
Christianity is to become an ecology-conscious church, Rifkin predicts, slamming shut the voracious jaws of the capitalist machine devouring the Earth...
...making this reformulation? A handful of liberal theologians? Rifkin himself admits the change is virtually unnoticed. One spectacular example is Billy Graham's conversion from nuke-the-Russian-Antichrist-cold-warrior to disarmament-peacenik-one-worlder, but Graham knows he is in a very small minority. Is the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship likely to abandon the profit margin for a few more trees and whales just because Rifkin thinks the charismatics should pick up this redefinition as their marching banner? If anything, the Pentecostal revival is a reaction against the new values, against social innovations and moral liberalizations...
...interest of the participants and beneficiaries." While activists may argue that preserving union jobs and the long-term economic viability of urban areas is a legitimate financial interest of union members, socially-oriented investment decisions might invite class-action suits by members pursuing a narrower interpretation of the law. Rifkin and Barber suggest that unions could continue to maximize returns by confining their investments to companies with desirable labor policies within the Fortune 500. ERISA administrator Ian Lanoff appears sympathetic to this viewpoint...