1. Religion in America: Putnam & Campbell
“The most importance fact about religion in America is that we are now—and have been since the Founding—a relatively pious and observant people.”
(Sociology 156)

2. Strong Continuity
“The most importance fact about religion in America is that we are now—and have been since the Founding—a relatively pious and observant people.”
1948: 73% Americans believe in the afterlife
2006: 70%
1937: 73% Americans belong to a church or synagogue
1999: 73%
35-40% report having a “strong” religious affiliation since 1974
“American religions, compared to religions in many other countries, have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to changing circumstances.” (70-71)

3. Social Change
“Social change embodied in generational change is slow and gradual, because at any given time the population includes people from many different generations, and thus society-wide figures represent a kind of moving average.” (72)
“Period effects that simultaneously affect people of all ages produce social change measurable over a few years
“Large generational differences produce social change measurable over a few decades
“Small generational differences produce social change measurable only over many decades
“Pure life cycle effects produce no social change at all” (74)

4. Social Change
“In round numbers, each decade in an individual’s life adds one more week of church attendance to his or her annual average. Conversely, people born in each successive decade have attended church about one week fewer per year than people born a decade earlier.
People born in the 1950s and now in their fifties, for example, attend church about one week fewer per year than people born in the 1940s when they were in their fifties.”
If secularization is in fact occurring in America, “at this rate it will take a couple of centuries to reduce American religious observance to current European levels.” (75-76)
Generationally based declines in religious observance sped up in the 1960s, stabilized from the 1970s to the 1990s, and then accelerated again with the advent of the generation that reached adulthood in the 2000s (79)

5. Fig. 3.1

6. Backdrop: the 1950s
Post-WWII, church attendance spikes, mostly mainline Protestants
1950: 31% attend church weekly, 1957: 51% (all time high)
College-educated male veterans & famiies
Shared values
“Judeo-Christian” label emerges at this time
No partisan divide
Social pressure, civic duty
1957: 69% say that “religion is increasing its influence on American life”

7. Fig. 3.5

8. The Shock of the Long Sixties
“Long Sixties”: a lot of the things we call “the Sixties” took place in the 1970s
Massive onslaught against existing institutions
Government
Sex
1970: 80% of those who reached adulthood in the ‘60s say premarital sex “only sometimes” or “not at all” wrong, 80% of elder generations
Subsequent generations more conservative on political, social, religious matter, but don’t revert to tradition on sex
Our class: 27% (21) say immoral, 73% (57) say not
Religion
Drugs
“Question Authority”
Emphasis on individual desires (91-94)

9. Christianity in the ‘60s Vatican II: 1962-1965
Latin Mass replaced by vernacular
Confession all but disappears
Papal recognition of other religions’ legitimacy
Change in attire
Increased role for the laity
Number of individuals identifying as Catholic, but attendance at Mass, especially among young, drops precipitously.
Catholics alone account for much of the decline in church attendance during the long ’60s
Non-churchgoing mainline Protestants drop the label
Attendance levels remain stable among those who still identify
Evangelicals begin to mobilize
Campus Crusade for Christ: 109 employees in 1960, 6,500 by mid-’70s (96-97)

10. The “Nones” “Spiritual” but not religious “Seekers” “Personalism”
“Multiple truths”
New religions
Unification Church, Transcendental Meditation, Church of Satan, Children of God, Hare Krishna movement, Jesus Freaks, increased interest in Buddhism, Wicca
“Sheilaism”
“I believe in God. I am not a fanatic. I can’t remember the last time that I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice My own Sheilaism is just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other.” (93)

11. Fig. 4.2

12. The First Aftershock
“Just as in politics, many Americans of all ages were deeply troubled by the moral and religious developments of the Sixties.
For the next two decades, these people—conservative in both religion and politics—swelled the ranks both of evangelical Protestant denominations and of the rapidly growing evangelical megachurches that disavowed denominations and termed themselves simply “Christian.” (103)
Notice: institutional crisis penetrates even the conservative reaction. Does not strengthen the mainline denominations.

13. Fig. 4.4

14. The First Aftershock
The Sixties were “an age of turmoil that many Americans found deeply repugnant to their fundamental moral and religious views.”
In 2006, ¾ evangelicals agree that “there are absolutely clear guidelines as to what is good and what is evil”
“The evangelical stance was perfectly suited to Americans deeply alienated from the culture of the Sixties. Some of these people had evangelical roots and thus were inclined (unlike their counterparts in other tradtions) to renew their religious involvement, while others were drawn into evangelical circles for the first time.”
In 2006, “after a quarter century of rising national prominence and power, more than 2/3” of evangelicals “said that they felt their values were ‘seriously’ or ‘moderately threatened in America today,’ a sense of embattlement greater than any other major religious tradition.” ( )

15. The First Aftershock
“The first aftershock was caused by many things, to be sure, but a central theme was concern over collapsing sexual morality.” (117)
“Religiosity and conservative politics became increasingly aligned, and abortion and gay rights became emblematic of the emergent culture wars.”
“To many religious Americans, this alignment of religion and politics represented a long-sought consummation, an appropriate retort to the excesses of the Sixties. Many other Americans were not so sure.” (120)

17. The Second Aftershock
By 1990, according to one survey, many young Americans “came to view religion as judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political.” (121)
“Nones”, which had steadily accounted for 5-7% of the population until ~1990
Not necessarily atheist

18. Fig. 4.11

19. Fig 4.13

20. Who are the Nones?
Except for being disproportionately young, not much different from national population
More likely men, whites, and non-Southerners
Mostly not atheists or agnostics.
Disproportionately raised in nonreligious households (but 16% of Americans in 2007 were nones, but only 7% from nonreligious backgrounds)
Because the rise of the nones was so abrupt, unlikely due to historical process of secularization
Heavily drawn from the center and left of the political spectrum
Change of opinion on homosexuality almost exactly simultaneous with rise of nones ( )

21. The Nones
While no strong claims made about causation, “The dramatic contrast between a young generation increasingly liberal on certain moral and lifestyle issues (though still potentially open to religious feelings and ideals) and an older generation of religious leaders who seemed to them consumed by the political fight against gay marriage was one important source of the second aftershock.”
“This group of young people came of age when ‘religion’ was identified with the Religious Right” and the fight against homosexuality and gay marriage, exactly the issues on which this group was most tolerant (130)

22. The Nones
“The new nones reported that ‘they became unaffiliated, at least in part, because they think of religious people as hypocritical, judgmental, or insincere.”
Many also “because they think that religious organizations focus too much on rules and not enough on spirituality.”
Growing gap between evangelicals and the rest of America on sexual morality (131)

23. Fluidity & Continuity
Though there has been much change, “in important ways the landscape of American religion has remained remarkably stable through this turbulent half century.”
What has changed in the decline in religious moderates, and numbers have shifted to a religious right and a secular left
But importantly: “History never ends.” ( )