Late America (1945-2001)

By: Katrina Gauntt

Political Impact

 

The 1970s led rise to the resurgence conservative movement with the elections of Carter, Reagan, and Bush. All three interjected religion in some way into their election campaign or policy in order to sway voters. The advantage of the idea worked through appeals to hometown roots and traditional American lifestyle with the ‘traditional’  or fundamental values and family values of the church.

  At the time many right wing conservative Christian groups came to play in American politics. The goal of the groups were to take Christian practices and morals and apply them to American law. Often termed at as Christian Right groups, the Christian Coalition of America was one of these Christian advocating groups of the late 1980s. In 1989 the group led by Pat Robertson, the group became one of the more powerful political action groups. Its goal was to represent the concerns and viewpoints of Christian Americans. Other early groups showed the same kind of avocation.

      

      The “I love America” rallies lead way for the Moral Majority headed by Jerry Falwell. This political action group was made up of Christian based conservative with the goals of improving the morale of America and refocusing on moral law. The group stated in 1979 and was one of the largest conservative lobbying groups ever. After Reagan departure from office the group declined.

 

Economic Impact

               

                Not many religious based occurrences can be directly related to an impact on economics; most take the course of social reforms. 9/11 is one few occurrences with heavy relations between religion and economics. The terrorist attack on September 11^th 2001, when two planes crashed into the twin towers, took many lives but also created a downfall in the world economics as well. The sight where the twin towers once stood is called ground zero. The towers were two of the main buildings making up the world trade center. The center was a combination of multiple things, such as hotels, shop, busy corporations that encouraged world trade in one central place. The architect Minoru Yamasaki  said his vision of the World Trade Center was  "The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness."  A group of extremist of the Islamic religion decided to make a point of their beliefs that America and all that it stood for was a representation of everything the Islamic religion stood against. The group was called Al-Qaeda, there extreme view of the Islamic religion led to the death of over 2,000 people and the destruction of one of the most prominent national trading locations in the world. The effects of the attack led to the war on terror, and reshape the views as well as the economic stand point of Americans.

Social Impact

                The social impact of religion was in a way reverse from the normal. Many movement and social norms that were coming to be were against the morals most religions had put in place. In the 1960s and 70s, the social norm moved away from traditional family life and was now more open to sex before marriage or in non-committed relationships. Many conservatives, supported the renewal of traditional or fundamental ways, and much of the older generations backed the return of these ways and the rejection of the hippie era. The Catholic Church went as far as declaring use of birth control against the catholic religion to combat the liberal and termed ‘unholy’ ways of the new era.

                Religion did make quite a splash in the civil rights movement, adjusting the social norm to be more accepting of racial and ethnical equality. Multiple social movement leaders had strong religious back grounds: Reverends Martin Luther King Jr, Wyatt T. Walker, and Joseph Lowery. Many of their campaigning speeches for the civil rights movement had religious ties or allusions seeded within them, making it more impactful to the crowd, that the cause was not just called for by the people but by a higher power too.

 

Other must know info:

 

New Religions of the Era:

Pentecostal Church-

                The church was formed in the early 1900s but in the 1960s it saw a great increase in
members because of the rise of the Charismatic movement (mentioned later) and the belief of a spirit baptism that cleanse people. The churches development also led to an outreach in its philosophies, expanding to different parts of the globe through evangelism and televangelism.

Televangelism-

                With the creation of the television a new opportunity for the expansion of religion seem to be more too. Primarily in the Christian religion, preachers like Baptist Billy Graham, Pentecostal Holiness preacher Oral Roberts, and Roman Catholic Fulton J. Sheen used the advantages the television to spread their message of the lord to the world.

Fourth Great Awakening:

Religious right movement (abortion and sexual revolution)-

The Religious right movement of the 1960s was refocusing of America back to traditional values. As the sexual revolution and abortion came into play, multiple religions felt they needed to make a stance to return America from whence it had strayed. The movement was born after the decision on the Roe v. Wade case. The case established that women had the choice on whether to have an abortion or not. The movement took offense to this legalization. In their eyes abortion was the equivalent of murder. As the movement moved to the 1980s, they took opposition against the emerging idea of homosexuality, stating the it went directly against the preaching of the bible.

Sexual Revolution-

In the 1960s, with the creation of the birth control pill, a new idea of marriage and sexual relations came to be. This new idea was more open to out of marriage sexual relations, with this new idea cam opposition of religion .In 1968 Pope Paul XI set fourth an edict, called the letter of human life, putting strict limitation on contraceptives. It is considered a sin for anyone of the Catholic religion to use contraceptive protection. The Roman Catholics took the strictest stance on the birth control matter but, most churches had a varying view on how moral the use of birth control was.

The Charismatic movement-

The protestant Charismatic movement spawned in the 1960s mainly within the evangelical church, basing itself in a renewal of the Pentecostal church. Multiple preachers at the time recounted the powerful Pentecostal experience they had endured encouraged them to separate from their original denomination. This new wave was different from the original Pentecostal church where such experience would bring a person closer to their denomination. 


 

Civil Rights Movement

Southern Christian Leadership conference-
           The civil rights movement was firmly based in Christianity. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was a civil rights organization first presided over by Martin Luther King, who was the first president of the organization and also a Baptist preacher. Founded in 1957, the conference was formed from the Montgomery boycott and was originally called the Negro Conference on Nonviolent Integration; it became the advocate in the south for many nonviolent protest and boycotts. Many of the leaders came from educated backgrounds, and based there goal of equality and desegregation in the bible and Christian preaching.
http://sclcnational.org/from-whence-weve-come/

 

Important Court Cases to Remember

 

Engel v. Vitale-

The court case occurred in 1962, essential founded in the movement of separating religion and public education. The case established that a mandatory opening day pray was unconstitutional by means of the Establishment clause in the first amendment. This clause said that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The beginning of school pray was declared unconstitutional because of these means.

Everson v. Board of Education-

                The decision of this 1947 court case made it unconstitutional for the board of education, or any state government department to fund private schools of the religious manner, on the bases of the Establishment clause in First Amendment. The constitution was created on the foundation of a strict separation of church and state. Allowing state taxes to fund such religious schools went against said foundation.