The Traumatic Years: American Religion and Culture in the '60s and '70s

Abstract

“If we take a broader view of the years since President John F. Kennedy issued his spirited summons to the nation, the overwhelming fact is that the entire religious realm—moral, spiritual, and attitudinal—has been so fundamentally altered that we confront a ‘new America’ in the 1980s. A new and comprehensive agenda of expectations and reform has gradually taken shape. Yet the evaluations and priorities placed on these new goals for the republic are very diverse. … America has a clouded future, [and] the legacy of the Traumatic Years can be interpreted only as at once both momentous and unresolved.”