- Roof and McKinley describe it as a time when "religious news is dominated by controvercies over which candidate for public office is the better Christian, by popular televiosion preachers and calls for restoring the nations morality, and by esoteric cults and strange new religious movemnts. (Roof and McKinley)
- Religion is forefront in American culture: 90% of the population has religious preferences and two-thirds are members of churches, synagogues, or other faith community. (Roof and McKinley)
- Extreme internal fragmentation and pluralism in the major churches. Statistics on Roof and McKinley 26.
- Rising awareness of religious pluralism have "forced to the forefront the question of religious America--if, and in what way, the country can be concieved of as a sacred enterprise." (Roof and McKinley 26)
- Steady decline of the Protestant majority from 67% in 1952 to 56% in 1985. (Roof and McKinley 27)
- Recent election of a Catholic president, Supreme Court decisions against conservative ideologies which "profoundly undercut Protestantism's hold on the culture." (Roof and McKinley 27).
- Declines in religious participation, down to a low 67% in 1982. Major study says 41% unchurched population in the states. (Roof and McKinley 27)
- Rise of the no-religious-preference demographic. 1% in the early 1950s to 4% in the mid-80s. Nine percent identify as non-affiliates, 7% higher than the previous period. (Roof and McKinley 28)
- Decline of liberal churches' attendance. (Roof and McKinley 29)
- Decline of Catholic attendance at mass. (Roof and McKinley 29)
- Rise in conservative Protestant, Jew, and Catholic attendance, ideology, and involvement in politics. More members turned to conservative expressions of their faith. The church, and I would guess other conservative groups, "would remain a bedrock of stability and ocontinutity, despite the changes underway." (Roof and McKinley 30)
- Rise of the New Right political movement, movement focused on return to moral foundations. (Roof and McKinley 31)
- Rise in average age of churchgoers, especially liberal denominations. Average age is 40, and in the mainline Protestant churches over 40% are 55 and higher. (Roof and McKinley 31-32)
- Higher representation of young people in conservative churches. (Roof and McKinley 32)
- The "lines of class, race, ethnicity, and relgion... are not as clearly drawn today as they were in an earlier time.."
Rising religious pluralism and awareness of it, new electronic mediums for both evangelism and moral corruption, a decline of liberal churches, rising adherence to irreligion, a drop in Protestant power and control and resurgence of hyper-conservative political ideology, and so much more. Sounds so familiar. We are in almost the exact same religio-political atmosphere now in 2008-14 as we were in 1980-88. Conservatives are losing control, growing fear, and thus they react with highly-publicised, aggressive.
Here's the atmosphere in the 60s-80s according to Hutchison in Religious Pluralism in America.
- Vatican II opened the Catholic church to alternative modes of linguist, cultural, and theological expression (e.g., liberation theology). (Hutchison 222)
- "New initiatives in theology were gaining their clearest--and for traditionalists their most alarming--expressions in the context of overseas missions, where questions about Christianity's relation to other religions could not be avoided or papered over with ambiguities." (Hutchison 222-23)
- Liberal, world-religion-ecumenical theologians had become "much more than the utterances of a few lonely voices" in the Protestant church. (Hutchison 223)
- Rise in Eastern religious affiliation. Hindus and buddhist went from a few thousand of each to a half million of each. By the 90s, more Hindus than Quakers, more Buddhists than Unitarians. (Hutchison 224)
- Islam grew to match the Jewish community at around 6 million adherents, outgrowing the old-time Christian denominations such as the Presbyterians or Episcopalians (Hutchison 224)