The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin & Public Confession in America
Susan Wise Bauer
Between 1969 and 2002, three American politicians (Edward Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton) and three ordained clergymen (Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Cardinal Bernard Law) made public confessions of wrongdoing to national audiences. These public confessions reveal that Protestant religious culture, particularly the neoevangelical culture of the twentieth century, had changed the expectations of many who did not consider themselves within neoevangelicalism's sphere of influence. By tracing the historical development of public confession from its medieval roots to its use in twentieth-century entertainment programming, this dissertation shows that Protestant confessional practice affected both secular American political discourse and American Catholic expectations.
Award History
0 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| PROSE Award for Media and Cultural Studies | 2008 | Honorable mention | Official source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
- Edward Kennedy78%
Show lower-confidence suggestions
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Jimmy Carter68%
- Bill Clinton65%
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
03 Suggested argument
Public confessions by prominent politicians and clergymen show Protestant (especially twentieth-century neoevangelical) culture shifted expectations about confession, influencing both secular political discourse and American Catholic expectations.
Model confidence 62%
04 Reading orientation
67 / 100 academicAcademic
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 78%.