The Religious Crisis of the 1960s

The Religious Crisis of the 1960s PDF Author: Hugh McLeod
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191538299
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The 1960s were a time of explosive religious change. In the Christian churches it was a time of innovation, from the 'new theology' and 'new morality' of Bishop Robinson to the evangelicalism of the Charismatic Movement, and of charismatic leaders, such as Pope John XXIII and Martin Luther King. But it was also a time of rapid social and cultural change when Christianity faced challenges from Eastern religions, from Marxism and feminism, and above all from new 'affluent' lifestyles. Hugh McLeod tells in detail, using oral history, how these movements and conflicts were experienced in England, but because the Sixties were an international phenomenon he also looks at other countries, especially the USA and France. McLeod explains what happened to religion in the 1960s, why it happened, and how the events of that decade shaped the rest of the 20th century.

The Religious Crisis of the 1960s

The Religious Crisis of the 1960s PDF Author: Hugh McLeod
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191538299
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 1960s were a time of explosive religious change. In the Christian churches it was a time of innovation, from the 'new theology' and 'new morality' of Bishop Robinson to the evangelicalism of the Charismatic Movement, and of charismatic leaders, such as Pope John XXIII and Martin Luther King. But it was also a time of rapid social and cultural change when Christianity faced challenges from Eastern religions, from Marxism and feminism, and above all from new 'affluent' lifestyles. Hugh McLeod tells in detail, using oral history, how these movements and conflicts were experienced in England, but because the Sixties were an international phenomenon he also looks at other countries, especially the USA and France. McLeod explains what happened to religion in the 1960s, why it happened, and how the events of that decade shaped the rest of the 20th century.

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment PDF Author: George Marsden
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465069770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular, liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision -- one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders. A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country's spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War.

After Evangelicalism

After Evangelicalism PDF Author: Kevin N. Flatt
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773588574
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
At a time when Canadians were arguing about the merits of a new flag, the birth-control pill, and the growing hippie counterculture, the leaders of Canada's largest Protestant church were occupied with turning much of English-Canadian religious culture on its head. In After Evangelicalism, Kevin Flatt reveals how the United Church of Canada abruptly reinvented its public image by cutting the remaining ties to its evangelical past. Flatt argues that although United Church leaders had already abandoned evangelical beliefs three decades earlier, it was only in the 1960s that rapid cultural shifts prompted the sudden dismantling of the church's evangelical programs and identity. Delving deep into the United Church's archives, Flatt uncovers behind-the-scenes developments that led to revolutionary and controversial changes in the church's evangelistic campaigns, educational programs, moral stances, and theological image. Not only did these changes evict evangelicalism from the United Church, but they helped trigger the denomination's ongoing numerical decline and decisively changed Canada's religious landscape. Challenging readers to see the Canadian religious crisis of the 1960s as involving more than just Quebec's Quiet Revolution, After Evangelicalism unveils the transformation of one of Canada's most prominent social institutions.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty PDF Author: Victoria Smolkin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691197237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

From Slogans to Mantras

From Slogans to Mantras PDF Author: Stephen A. Kent
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815629238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Maintains that the failure of political activism led many former radicals to become involved in such groups as the Hare Krishnas, Scientology, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, the Jesus movement, and the Children of God, and argues that numerous activists turned from psychedelia and political activism to guru worship and spiritual quest both as a response to the failures of social protest and as a new means of achieving social change. [book cover].

Sisters in Crisis, Revisited

Sisters in Crisis, Revisited PDF Author: Ann Carey
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1586177893
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
Fifty years ago, nearly 200,000 religious sisters worked in Catholic schools, hospitals and other institutions throughout the United States. American Catholics honored these women of faith who founded and built these flourishing works of mercy. Then came the ideological shifts and moral upheavals of the 1960s, and ever since, most women's orders in the United States have been in a state of crisis. Now the sisters are aging, with fewer and fewer younger women to take their place. Perhaps related to this demographic shift is the continuing doctrinal confusion that has come under the scrutiny of the Vatican. Using the archival records of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and other prominent groups of sisters, journalist and author Ann Carey shows how feminist activists unraveled American women's religious communities from their leadership positions in national organizations and large congregations. She also explains the recent and necessary interventions by the Vatican. After examining the many forces that have contributed to the crisis, Carey reports on a promising sign of renewal in American religious life: the growing number of young women attracted to older communities that have retained their identity and newly formed, yet traditional, congregations.

Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right

Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right PDF Author: J. Brooks Flippen
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820337706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
As Jimmy Carter ascended to the presidency the heir apparent to Democratic liberalism, he touted his background as a born-again evangelical. Once in office, his faith indeed helped form policy on a number of controversial moral issues. By acknowledging certain behaviors as sinful while insisting that they were private matters beyond government interference, J. Brooks Flippen argues, Carter unintentionally alienated both social liberals and conservative Christians, thus ensuring that the debate over these moral “family issues” acquired a new prominence in public and political life. The Carter era, according to Flippen, stood at a fault line in American culture, religion, and politics. In the wake of the 1960s, some Americans worried that the traditional family faced a grave crisis. This newly politicized constituency viewed secular humanism in education, the recognition of reproductive rights established by Roe v. Wade, feminism, and the struggle for homosexual rights as evidence of cultural decay and as a challenge to religious orthodoxy. Social liberals viewed Carter's faith with skepticism and took issue with his seeming unwillingness to build on recent progressive victories. Ultimately, Flippen argues, conservative Christians emerged as the Religious Right and were adopted into the Republican fold. Examining Carter's struggle to placate competing interests against the backdrop of difficult foreign and domestic issues—a struggling economy, the stalled Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, disputes in the Middle East, handover of the Panama Canal, and the Iranian hostage crisis—Flippen shows how a political dynamic was formed that continues to this day.

César Chávez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers’ Struggle for Social Justice

César Chávez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers’ Struggle for Social Justice PDF Author: Marco G. Prouty
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816549869
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
César Chávez and the farmworkers’ struggle for justice polarized the Catholic community in California’s Central Valley during the 1965–1970 Delano Grape Strike. Because most farmworkers and landowners were Catholic, the American Catholic Church was placed in the challenging position of choosing sides in an intrafaith conflict. Twice Chávez petitioned the Catholic Church for help. Finally, in 1969 the American Catholic hierarchy responded by creating the Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Farm Labor. This committee of five bishops and two priests traveled California’s Central Valley and mediated a settlement in the five-year conflict. Within months, a new and more difficult struggle began in California’s lettuce fields. This time the Catholic Church drew on its long-standing tradition of social teaching and shifted its policy from neutrality to outright support for César Chávez and his union, the United Farmworkers (UFW). The Bishops’ Committee became so instrumental in the UFW’s success that Chávez declared its intervention “the single most important thing that has helped us.” Drawing upon rich, untapped archival sources at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Marco Prouty exposes the American Catholic hierarchy’s internal, and often confidential, deliberations during the California farm labor crisis of the 1960s and 1970s. He traces the Church’s gradual transition from reluctant mediator to outright supporter of Chávez, providing an intimate view of the Church’s decision-making process and Chávez’s steadfast struggle to win rights for farmworkers. This lucid, solidly researched text will be an invaluable addition to the fields of labor history, social justice, ethnic studies, and religious history.

Religious Conflict in Brazil

Religious Conflict in Brazil PDF Author: Erika Helgen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The story of how Brazilian Catholics and Protestants confronted one of the greatest shocks to the Latin American religious system in its 500-year history This innovative study explores the transition in Brazil from a hegemonically Catholic society to a religiously pluralistic society. With sensitivity, Erika Helgen shows that the rise of religious pluralism was fraught with conflict and violence, as Catholic bishops, priests, and friars organized intense campaigns against Protestantism. These episodes of religious violence were not isolated outbursts of reactionary rage, but rather formed part of a longer process through which religious groups articulated their vision for Brazil’s national future.

The New Nuns

The New Nuns PDF Author: Amy L. Koehlinger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674024731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
In the 1960s, a number of Catholic women religious in the United States abandoned traditional apostolic works to experiment with new and often unprecedented forms of service among non-Catholics. Amy Koehlinger explores the phenomenon of the "new nun" through close examination of one of its most visible forms--the experience of white sisters working in African-American communities. In a complex network of programs and activities Koehlinger describes as the "racial apostolate," sisters taught at African-American colleges in the South, held racial sensitivity sessions in integrating neighborhoods, and created programs for children of color in public housing projects. Engaging with issues of race and justice allowed the sisters to see themselves, their vocation, and the Church in dramatically different terms. In this book, Koehlinger captures the confusion and frustration, as well as the exuberance and delight, they experienced in their new Christian mission. Their increasing autonomy and frequent critiques of institutional misogyny shaped reforms within their institute and sharpened a post-Vatican II crisis of authority. From the Selma march to Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, Amy Koehlinger illuminates the transformative nature of the nexus of race, religion, and gender in American society.