There was a mid-20th century revival of the Christian faith in America delineated well by Ross Douthat in Bad Religion (2012). According to Mr Douthat, church membership grew twice as fast as the growth of population, seminaries filled up, and respect for religious leaders increased. American spending on constructing new citadels to their faith skyrocketed, from $ 26 million in 1945 to $ 1 billion in 1960. A resurgent faith captured the imagination of Hollywood and the publishing world. Films with religious themes such as Ben Hur (1959) and The Ten Commandments (1956) reflected the spirit of the age and religious leaders suddenly found space on the covers of mainstream publications.
Factors such as the return of war veterans, growth of suburbs, and the baby boom contributed to this phenomenon but a change in the intellectual outlook seemed to be at work too. The carnage, death, and destruction of WWII weakened the modernist belief that mankind was on a continuum of progress. This in turn diminished belief in liberal modernist theology, which had displaced Evangelism as the faith of the intelligentsia. Modernist theology developed in the late 19th century as a response to the challenges of new scientific discoveries, Darwinism, and criticism of the Bible. It emphasised social aspects of the Christian faith over dogma and intellectual integrity. Unable to reconcile inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, it emphasised the symbolic and allegorical over the literal. Sceptical that their faith provided the answer to mankind’s ultimate purpose, the modernist theologians stressed ethics and social reform over eschatology. In some aspects theirs was a faith akin to Buddhism and Hinduism — more of a Social Gospel than an answer to ‘where do we come from?’ and ‘where do we go?’ Modernist liberal theologians downgraded anything transcendental, mysterious, or miraculous in their faith. They wanted to keep religion compatible with progress. An implicit acceptance of Christianity’s failure in the face of modernity was embedded in their brand of Christianity.
Before modernist liberal theology took hold, Evangelism was by and large the faith of American Protestants. Blind adherence to the Christian Gospel, its preaching and personal conversion were its salient characteristics. However, 19th century science and biblical criticism marginalised the Evangelical faith. Evangelicals lost the battle for the major Protestant churches (other than the Southern Baptist Convention) to the modernists. Further tainted by their slide into Fundamentalism in the 1920s, they were relegated to being the faith of the backward, provincial, and rural areas of America. Considered an anachronism by modernists, they were expected to eventually disappear. But that is not what happened.
Mid-century Protestant revivalists such as Niebuhr Reinhold and Billy Graham took the faith of the marginalised and the dispossessed and brought it back into the centre of American life. Niebuhr preached a neo-orthodoxy, which emphasised a return to the roots of Protestantism. In his teaching, traditional concepts such as original sin and divine judgment regained central importance. Neo-orthodoxy was not a homogeneous faith. It differed in its details from thinker to thinker but a consensus existed within it on a return to fundamental Protestant beliefs.
Increasing unity within the hitherto fragmented religious map of American Christianity was the defining feature of this revival. Its high point was the establishment in 1958 of the National Council of Churches headquarters in Manhattan, New York. The Council itself was formed in 1950. Northern Baptist John D Rockefeller granted a 99-year rent free lease on the building and President Eisenhower laid its cornerstone in 1958, informing the world that the nation’s churches were “sturdy defenders of the Constitutional and God-given rights of each citizen” and that the nation’s moral life was predicated on a firm foundation of religion. These are the remarks that seem ironic today with the increasing secularisation of American society and especially so when contrasted with US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s dissenting remarks in a case 28 years later. The judge declared that “…The legitimacy of secular legislation depends…on whether the State can advance some justification for its law beyond conformity to religious doctrine.”
Catholicism, long considered the refugees’ faith, gained prestige, acceptance, and membership during the mid-century revival, as did the Black church, which was the most marginal of American Churches. Not only did the churches grow during this period, they also came together.
Yet many of the present day heresies had forerunners in the mid-century revival. Contemporary preachers of self-help and self-love such as Oprah Winfrey owe an enormous debt to Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, a 1952 bestseller. Prosperity gospel preachers such as Joel Osteen are the spiritual descendants of Oral Roberts and his kith and the spiritual but not religious mush of the likes of Deepak Chopra had its antecedent in Anne Morrow’s 1955 bestseller Gift from the Sea.
The writer is a freelance writer and an electrical engineer. He can be reached at [email protected]