The church in the middle of the twentieth century was an integral part of America. But after WWII, it took on a decidedly culture Christianity flavor. Everyone was Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. Look at the Arlington National Cemetery at the time. If there are Muslin or Athiest or any other religious symbol, they would have been minuscule and a very tiny minority. Today I am sure it would be much different. The public cemeteries would have reflected the same religious demographics.
The US experienced a kind of revival but not like earlier revivals that were moves of God by His Holy Spirit. There was a return to religion to form a context for a way to view the world as it took shape after the two World Wars and the current Cold war of the mid-century. But the mainline churches had been corrupted by the higher critics of neo-orthodoxy. They offered a context to the godless communism that emerged as a new threat after the Korean War. However, the new wave of religion was a form of godliness but denied God's power and personalness.
God was getting lost in the suburbs. What connection to each other and God in the agricultural area was morphing into the industrial age, and a mechanized process god: religion emerged. The moral values of America were a Judeo-Christian sort of ethic. Check out Hay's Rule and Hollywood battles.
School prayer was normative, and textbooks were sprinkled with spiritual values. But the tenuous values and superficial adherence to an abstract God began to crack.
James Dean and the like began to portend and foretell what the '60s would bring.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment