The Radical Turn in Theology and Ethics: Why It Occurred in the 1960's

Abstract

The decade of the 1960's has been marked by revolutionary changes in theology and ethics as well as in re ligious attitudes and moral standards. The over-all ecclesiasti cal situation has also been profoundly altered, for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews alike. Radical theology, powerful counter cultural movements, a search for new life styles, serious dis satisfactions with traditional modes of religious expression, and widespread questioning of long-accepted views on the church, the university, and the state have put the 1960's into sharp contrast with the postwar period of affluence and religious re vival. This relatively sudden transition is by no means easily explained, especially since the underlying intellectual and social issues have been slowly maturing for hundreds of years. There are certain half-coincidental convergences and a number of es pecially catalytic events, however, that have given a powerful popular base to anxieties and doubts that were once more restricted. Especially critical were the demographic and tech nological developments that led, almost simultaneously, to both an urban crisis and a racial crisis. At the same time that his toric religious convictions and ecclesiastical loyalties were being severely tested, moreover, the long-accepted grounds for confi dence in and allegiance to the American system were being undermined by the diversion of governmental concern and resources from the works of peace and reconstruction to the prosecution of the war in Vietnam. What might otherwise have been a difficult but gradual transition thus became sudden, traumatic, and disruptive.