THE 1970s: RELIGION: OVERVIEW

Decline of the Mainline Churches

The decline of membership and influence of Mainline Protestant denominations continued in the 1970s. Conservatives charged that these denominations had lost their fire, and consequently their membership, to more committed groups. Perhaps more people left the Mainline organizations for new modes of worship or because organized religion had lost its relevance to them.

Cultural Pressures

The Mainline churches struggled over accommodating the cultural changes that had begun in midcentury. Their leaders and many of their members had become outspoken opponents of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Their influence was more significant in forcing the Nixon administration to the diplomatic bargaining table than were the strident and often violent actions of the organized antiwar movement. In spite of their traditional Republican Party roots, people in these denominations became the most effective opponents of President Richard Nixon in the ongoing Watergate scandal. This political action offended conservatives and seemed to distract them from more spiritual matters.

The Challenge of feminism

These denominations also wrestled with the implications of the growing feminist movement. Some denominations, such as the Disciples of Christ, the United Methodist church, and the leading Presbyterian churches, had admitted women to the ministry in the past. Now the Lutheran churches and the Episcopal church wrestled over the question of the ordination of females. Most accepted the practice before the decade was over.

Sex

While few Protestant denominations had reservations about the use of birth control, each struggled to come to grips with the new, relaxed standards of sexual morality, including premarital sex and abortion. They also began the long-term discussion of homosexuality and the legitimacy of the ordination of practicing homosexuals.

The Rise of Evangelicals

The number of conservative Protestants, increasingly called Evangelicals but including traditional Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and Pentecostalists, grew rapidly in the decade. Their denominations and organizations acquired new self-confidence and assurance as the groups reflected the growing economic, social, and political influence of their members. The public became familiar with the phrase born-again in the presidential election of 1976 when Jimmy Carter, a Georgia peanut farmer and businessman, as well as a Southern Baptist, introduced conversion theology to the general public. Newsweek celebrated 1976 as the "Year of the Evangelical." As the membership of these conservative denominations grew, they began to move aggressively into the public arena, particularly over social and cultural questions such as abortion, gay rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment. In the long run President Carter would be the target of their anger.

Television Ministries

Part of the newfound confidence of these Evangelicals came from the growing popularity of television ministries that used the now-established and burgeoning medium of cable television. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) was the largest religious system, but other televangelists, as they were called, attracted large audiences and became subjects of public discussion before the decade was over. Jim and Tammy Bakker, with their PTL ministry; Jimmy Swaggart; and Jerry Falwell were celebrities in a celebrity-conscious society.

Change and Tradition in Catholicism

The Roman Catholic community continued to adjust to the forces of change unleashed by the Second Vatican Council of 1963-1965. Priests and nuns continued to leave their orders, and lay people became more assertive in religious affairs. The clearest evidence of this new assertiveness was the growing number of Catholics who used birth control. Although Pope John Paul II, the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope in centuries, attempted to reassert the leadership of the clergy in sexual issues, his popularity in the United States did not change the behavior of his U.S. followers.

Yom Kippur War

The Jewish community increasingly identified itself with the Jewish state of Israel after the Arab-Israel war of 1967. That identification intensified when the frontline Arab states launched a surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, in 1973. The Israeli forces were nearly overwhelmed until massive amounts of American military equipment replaced that destroyed by the Arabs. American Jews were disappointed by what they considered the failure of liberal Protestants and Catholics to support the leading democratic state in the Middle East, but they willingly accepted the support of Evangelicals who saw the Jewish state as a confirmation of biblical prophecy that Jesus was returning soon.

Cults and Nontraditional Religions

Members of the three traditional religious communities were concerned about the growth of new religious groups in the nation. While many observers were tolerant of religions brought from Asia by immigrants allowed under the revised immigration rules of 1965, some of these imports seemed to target young Americans and often seemed to take their converts not only from their traditional faiths but even from their old communities and families. In the course of the decade there was much talk of cults and brainwashing, and people calling themselves deprogrammers offered their services to parents who hoped to reclaim their children from some religious quest that seemed bizarre to those in familiar faiths. This fear of cults climaxed with the mass suicides and murders in Guyana in 1978 when Jim Jones led or forced nearly a thousand of his followers into what he called "revolutionary suicide."

Politics of Religion,

By the end of the decade some conservative voters had fused their religious and political views into partisan political activism to stop the rush of cultural change and promote the political advancement of their economic and political views. The most famous of these movements was Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, which aimed at reasserting what he believed were America's traditional social values in a secular culture that was dominated by government and that seemed open to sexual immorality. If the United States were to be strong in world affairs, the Moral Majority asserted, it needed to be strong in the moral values which had made the country great. Evangelicals, who had left politics after the collapse of Prohibition in the 1930s, returned to the political arena to "save America's soul."