1967-1972 -- The Watershed Years

What were some of the contributing factors to how our society has evolved to where it is today? I am not a historian, but it is interesting to me how current events and new ideologies seem to emerge and converge with more traditional ideologies. They seem to intensify each other, and in so doing create societal change.

After World War II, fundamental changes began to take place within the country. An eighteen-year long Baby Boom produced a generation of post-war children unequaled in size.[1] They were the largest single population group in the United States. Their sheer size created ever newer markets. Entrepreneurs catered to their every whim. The prosperity of the post-war years and the advent of short-term credit added to the purchasing-power of this cohort. In the mid- to late sixties, the Baby Boomers arrived on university campuses with idealism and a taste for personal freedom.

At the same time, an ideological and philosophical shift was moving on most university campuses. Like the Modern Era ushered in by the Free Thinkers in 18^th century Europe, the decade of the 1960s was signaling the emergence of Postmodern thought into the generation now firmly in charge of every aspect of our society.

Their well-known rejection of the values and ideals that had catered to their every desire came as a surprise to their elders. They embraced the ideals of free expression which was a departure from the limits of the world of their parents.

As if in conspiracy, national events occurred to reinforce their rejection of modern values. One could posit that these events occurring between 1967-1972, helped to define an ideological part of complex culture:

1.         The Cold War and the threat of total destruction.

2.         Woodstock

3.         The sexual revolution – “free love” (Playboy)

4.         Free speech at Berkeley

5.         Drug culture

6.         The Civil Rights movement.

7.         Vietnam protest movement – Kent State.

8.         The 1968 Democratic convention.

9.         The Feminist and Gay Rights Movements.

10.     The "God is Dead" movement

11.     Situational ethics

12.     The landing on the moon

13.     The Assassinations of

•        Malcolm X (1965)

•        John F. Kennedy

•        Martin Luther King, Jr.

•        Bobby Kennedy

14.     Watergate

15.     The banning of prayer in public schools

16.     Roe vs. Wade (early in 1973).        

The accumulation of such massive societal crises only reinforced their pledge to question their elder’s commitment to modernity.[2] Far Eastern religions[3] were explored. They experimented with experience-altering and hard drugs in an effort to find meaning beyond reason. Their movement away from organized religion, and a fundamental distrust of any institutions, were further hallmarks of this generation. While embracing the expressive freedom of rationalism, they also aspired to find expression beyond rationalism's strict adherence to human reason alone.

As the Boomers have aged and moved into positions of leadership, their quest has been translated into policy. Although the values of the generations following them will have their own impact, the values of the Boomers[4] will be definitive for the next decades.

Many Christians feel as though expressive/individualism’s new vigor is at the expense of Christianity and the Church. But beyond that, it seems as though every world event is conspiring to strengthen the hand of expressive individualism (Bellah, 1985). This concern helps us better to understand why the biblical/religious traditions tend either to fight or to flee complex culture.

Are there ways these sea changes in society can be used to the Church’s advantage?

Will the Church need to do some soul-searching and shift its strategy to meet this challenge? If so, what will it entail?

To what extent might the Millennials (the Boomer’s children), for whom life without computers and the internet is a foreign concept, influence an additional shift in our culture?

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[1] Cultures, under normal circumstances, are generally distinguished from other cultures external to themselves.  Internal heterogeneity occurs, when a culture undergoes such internal changes that internal differentiation is observable.

[2] These movements developed within a significant literary context.  A short list of such works might include Rachael Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Aldus Huxley's Brave New World (1932), George Orwell's 1984 (1949), and B. F. Skinner's Walden Two (1948).  Additional authors, including the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre, provided a philosophical foundation for today's urban society.

[3] Chiefly Hinduism and Buddhism were consulted.

[4] The Boomers are now between the ages of 45 and 63, and make up approximately one-third of the U. S. population.