The End of Empathy by John W. Compton

Author:John W. Compton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Erosion of Religious Authority before the 1960s

The first flaw in the familiar narrative linking the decline of the mainline churches to the political upheaval of the late 1960s concerns the issue of timing. Simply put, the postwar religion boom petered out in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that is, well before the rise of the various left-wing political movements—antiwar, black power, women’s liberation—that are often blamed for driving a wedge between mainline leaders and average white churchgoers. As Figure 8.1 shows, the percentage of Americans who told Gallup interviewers they had attended religious services in the previous week shot up from 39 percent in 1950 to an all-time high of 51 percent in 1957. Thereafter weekly attendance declined by roughly one percentage point per year, falling to 45 percent by 1964 and to 42 percent by 1970. Looking only at Protestants, weekly attendance peaked in 1957–1958 at 44 percent. By 1964 it had fallen to 38 percent, where it would remain more or less unchanged for the rest of the decade.

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