For many people, the '60s were a period of reawakening. The political and cultural upheavals of the time had a tremendous effect on the spiritual lives of Americans, and American religion in its various forms and incarnations has not been the same since. Ellwood pulls together the changes that occurred in organized and disorganized religions during this turbulent decade.
The Spirit of the Sixties explains how and why the personal became political when Sixties activists confronted the institutions of American postwar culture. The Spirit of the Sixties uses political personalism to explain how and why the personal became political when Sixties activists confronted the institutions of American postwar culture. After establishing its origins in the Catholic Worker movement, the Beat generation, the civil rights movement, and Ban-the-Bomb protests, James Farrell demonstrates the impact of personalism on Sixties radicalism. Students, antiwar activists and counterculturalists all used personalist perspectives in the "here and now revolution" of the decade. These perspectives also persisted in American politics after the Sixties. Exploring the Sixties not just as history but as current affairs, Farrell revisits the perennial questions of human purpose and cultural practice contested in the decade.
Ellwood frames his detailed and lively account with the provocative idea of the fifties as a "supply-side" free enterprise spiritual marketplace, with heady competition between religious groups and leaders, and with church attendance at a record high.
Blood. Thick, red, still. I shivered in spite of the comfortable temperature in the room. Staring fixedly at the ooze, I watched the edges curl inward as if it were trying to remove itself from the white linoleum, embarrassed by its own unseemly appearance. Except for the blood, all was normal in the primate biology lab of Loma University. Situated in upscale San Larimor, the campus's property nestles in the rolling hills just northwest of Los Angeles renowned for stately Mediterranean style mansions and frequent celebrity sightings. San Larimor Police Detective, Cate Blaine becomes embroiled in a puzzle of blood, a missing security guard and a deadly chase against time. While searching for the answers to the case, Cate is searching for clues to solving her own inner battle dealing with the senseless loss of her son and husband. As she moves between the real world of crime and the inner chaos of her emotions, she is in jeopardy of loosing her job and her sanity. Thrown into an unwelcome partnership with LU's Private Security chief, Sloane Stevens, Cate fights the impulse to keep case details from the blue-eyed, ex-cop, when . . . The flashlight reflecting off the industrial plastic, made Stan's face and body just visible. Blank eyes stared back at us, a silent scream contorting his features. Sloane's involvement proves almost too much, as Cate races against time . . . murders and the possibility of her safety.
Each essay in this volume sheds light on an important aspect of the decade&—actually a decade and half&—known as the Sixties. The Sixties are famous for the diverse social movements that threatened the essence of American public policy and mainstream society and changed those very entities in fundamental ways. These essays juxtapose the dramatic narratives of social movements, including civil rights, women's liberation, and antiwar protest, and the Cold War liberalism that spawned them. The contributors are two political scientists, several historians influenced by the social sciences, and the senior staff attorney for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. Contributors are Brian Balogh, Hugh He&člo, Martha Derthick, Daryl Michael Scott, W. J. Rorabaugh, Martha F. Davis, and Louis Galambos.
If the World Wars defined the first half of the twentieth century, the sixties defined the second half, acting as the pivot on which modern times have turned. From popular music to individual liberties, the tastes and convictions of the Western world are indelibly stamped with the impact of this tumultuous decade. Framing the sixties as a period stretching from 1958 to 1974, Arthur Marwick argues that this long decade ushered in nothing less than a cultural revolution – one that raged most clearly in the United States, Britain, France, and Italy. Marwick recaptures the events and movements that shaped life as we know it: the rise of a youth subculture across the West; the sit-ins and marches of the civil rights movement; Britain's surprising rise to leadership in fashion and music; the emerging storm over Vietnam; the Paris student uprising of 1968; the growing force of feminism, and much more. For some, it was a golden age of liberation and political progress; for others, an era in which depravity was celebrated, and the secure moral and social framework subverted. The sixties was no short-term era of ecstasy and excess. On the contrary, the decade set the cultural and social agenda for the rest of the century, and left deep divisions still felt today.
In the decades following the Second World War, North America and Western Europe experienced widespread secularization and dechristianization; many scholars have pinpointed the 1960s as a pivotally important period in this decline. The Sixties and Beyond examines the scope and significance of dechristianization in the western world between 1945 and 2000. A thematically wide-ranging and interdisciplinary collection, The Sixties and Beyond uses a framework that compares the social and cultural experiences of North America and Western Europe during this period. The internationally based contributors examine the dynamic place of Christianity in both private lives and public discourses and practices by assessing issues such as gender relations, family life, religious education, the changing relationship of church and state, and the internal dynamics of religious organizations. The Sixties and Beyond is an excellent contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on the 1960s as well as to the history of Christianity in the western world.
The 1960s were a transformative era for American politics, but much is still unknown about the growth of conservatism during the period when it was radically reshaped and became the national political force that it is today. In their efforts to chronicle the national politicians and organizations that led the movement, previous histories have often neglected local perspectives, the role of religion, transnational exchange, and other aspects that help to explain conservatism's enduring influence in American politics. Taken together, the contributions gathered here offer a cutting-edge synthesis that incorporates these overlooked developments and provides new insights into the way that the 1960s shaped the trajectory of postwar conservatism.
Our culture offers little help in coping with and overcoming the enormous personal, social, and economic changes that are occurring around us and within our lives. Finding Yourself in Transition explores the spiritual opportunities inherent in life's changes and helps us discover how to use them as a gateway to greater personal and spiritual growth.
Yoga classes and Zen meditation, New-Age retreats and nature mysticism—all are part of an ongoing religious experimentation that has surprisingly deep roots in American history. Tracing out the country’s Transcendentalist and cosmopolitan religious impulses over the last two centuries, Restless Souls explores America’s abiding romance with spirituality as religion’s better half. Now in its second edition, including a new preface, Leigh Eric Schmidt's fascinating book provides a rich account of how this open-road spirituality developed in American culture in the first place as well as a sweeping survey of the liberal religious movements that touted it and ensured its continued vitality.
