Anxiety and the church's role

Abstract

Anxiety, like time, is always with us and consequently so difficult to put our finger on. To adapt Augustine's aphorism on time: What, then, is anxiety? If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. We are all aware of anxiety as an affect in the presence of a threat. Freud has aptly described the affect or feeling as a "freely floating, general apprehensiveness." We are not so aware that anxiety performs a function: to signal a situation of danger. Both the feeling state and the function run through three forms of anxiety, sometimes constructively, often destructively. In this paper I shall look at the three forms, trace their interrelationships, and pinpoint some things the church can do to help lessen the destructive side of anxiety.