Religion in Postwar
America
U.S. Religious History
Suburbia and Religion
Phenomenal
growth of churches, 1945–60
Baby
Boom
New
modernist sacred architecture
Politics and Cold War
Anticommunist
unity, 1950-1965
Religious
belief distinguishes America from godless Communism
Catholic
conservatism and anti-Communism: Joseph McCarthy
Catholic Church in
Europe staunchly anti-Communist, weakening American anti-Catholicism
Atomic
weapons and Israel, 1948, encourage dispensational premillennialists
Anti-New
Deal Republican millionaires link politics and Christianity
President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961
“Under
God,” 1954, and “In God we trust,” 1956
Moderate
evangelicalism dominates: Billy Graham
Supreme Court and
Church-State Relations
Jehovah’s Witnesses cases, 1943 (and many others)
No
pledge; conscientious objectors; right to proselytize
Schools
Bible-reading
dropped in Northern schools, 1870s-1880s
Court
tests: “secular purpose”; no “excessive entanglements”
No
state-written prayer, 1962, or Lord’s Prayer, 1963
No
religious school funding, 1972
Religion versus freedom: “right to privacy”
Contraceptives:
Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965
Abortion:
Roe v. Wade, 1973
Protestant Postwar
Theology:
Neo-Orthodoxy
Return
to traditional language of Protestantism
Not
Fundamentalist: no inerrancy
Keep
emphasis on this world, like the Social Gospel
Religion
interconnected w/economics, society, ethics, politics
Reinhold
Niebuhr (1892–1971): Christian Realism
Serenity
prayer
Father, give us courage
to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and
the insight to know the one from the other.
Liberal
Protestant Theology Fragments
Vietnam
War shatters anticommunist unity, 1965-1973
Jews in Postwar
America
World
War II & Cold War
Shock
at Holocaust and fear of McCarthyist anti-Communist hysteria
Political
moderation: From radicals to liberal Democrats
Assimilation
Suburbanization
Barriers
drop in the 1960s; acceptance at highest levels of society
High
rate of intermarriage: threat to future of Judaism?
Vatican II: New
Directions
Controversy
over John F. Kennedy’s candidacy, 1960
Pope
John XXIII and Vatican II, 1962-5
Liberalization:
no more Latin
New
ecclesiology: body of bishops
New
focus: social justice
Black Churches: Glory
Years
Southern
churches in crisis
Revitalization
during Civil Rights Era
Southern
Christian Leadership Conference
Martin
Luther King, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton
James
Cone: black theology of liberation
The
challenge of Malcolm X
Black
Power & decline of activism