In the 1950s the Conservative Intellectual Movement was trying to get its legs and define what it was they, as a group, believed and make those beliefs known in the public arena. To this group:

…politics was important and time was running out. It was not enough to proclaim their ideals and anathematize the forces of darkness. The defense of Western civilization required that their ideas be implemented, and the war could not be fought solely in academic journals or in National Review. Sooner of later the conservative intellectual movement, if it wanted to succeed, would have to shape political forces and prevail in the political marketplace. It would have to do more than stand athwart history, yelling “Stop.” (1)

.John Dewey and other Social Darwinists in the 1930s regarded the educational system as the way to bring about social change and set about the task of changing culture. By the 1960s most of the educators, attorneys, doctors, politicians, and Supreme Court Justices and many ministers had been trained in that system. Realistically John Dewey and his followers were every bit as anti-intellectual as the fundamentalists they so loved to attack. For nearly 30 years now their primary concern was changing society not reading, writing and arithmetic. The fruit of their labor began manifesting itself in the 1960s under Chief Justice Earl Warren.

In 1961 the Supreme Court referred to secular humanism as a religion. Continue reading …

Maslow’s doctrine of “peak experience” as the way to evaluate truth was becoming as much a part of the church as it was the culture in general. The high walls of denominational separation which had served to protect fundamental doctrines of the faith weren’t taken down to a reasonable height where the various denominations could work together in a variety of areas but rather would be functionally obliterated with the advent of the “Renewal Movement” and knowing truth through the “peak experience” of, and “my story about” the “Holy Spirit” in 1960. Vinson Synan gives a brief history of the birth and growth of Pentecostalism and he outlines a three step process of which:

The final phase was the penetration of Pentecostalism into the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches as “charismatic renewal” movements… 1

This phase proved to be enormously effective in its influence: Continue reading …

Fundamentalist Christians had by the 1950s become more defined by a particular set of do’s and don’ts than by answering the “what’s” and “whys” of their beliefs. Their world was neatly divided into “the black hats” and “the white hats,” the good folks and the bad. The anti-intellectual faith of the fundamentalist Christian community had reduced its practical distinctive into a set of dress and behavioral codes. “The rules” stated clearly that Christian men must have short hair—women must always wear dresses. No one could listen to music Continue reading …