Middle America Comes of Age

Here he is with Eisenhower riding in an open car (still considered safe at the time)

He visits American farms

He even visits Hollywood

Here he is with Frank Sinatra ... and Shirley MacLaine during the filming of Can Can

And thus the world closes out the 1950s with the hope
that it has entered a new era of total peace

CHRISTIAN AMERICA ... AS IT IS ABOUT TO HEAD INTO THE 1960s

Certainly, as America headed into the next decade, it had no way of knowing how much that decade would bring deep changes to the nation. In many ways for Middle America, the 1950s had been a time of relative domestic innocence – at least since the downfall of McCarthy in 1954. True, the Cold War with Russia, and Communism in general, still raged beyond America's borders. But it was easy enough in the security of Fortress American for Vet society (and its children) to turn its attentions away from such complexities ... and spend many untroubled hours watching I Love Lucy and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (and family) on television. True, there was also the deeply troubling question of Black-White race relations, except that this issue seemed to gain only marginal notice outside of the Deep South.

The 1950s "Happy Days" ...
that disappeared by the mid-1970s

In fact, in the mid-1970s (running until the mid-1980s) – as a follow-up to the chaotic period running from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s – a very popular television program during many of those years was Happy Days, a nostalgic TV series looking back wistfully on the halcyon period of mid-1950s to mid-1960s America. Comparatively speaking, those were indeed fairly Happy Days.

But the troubles that would explode in America by the mid-1960s were there underneath the surface, waiting for the right opportunity to reveal themselves.

One of the most important of these actually had its planting in the American soil all the way back at the Age of American Progressivism at the turn into the 20th century and the American involvement in World War One soon thereafter. What is being referred to here is the rising sense among Americans that a new millennium was definitely upon the country. But it was no longer (as it was in the time period leading up to and including the American Civil War) based on a sense of Divine accounting or judgment – or Christ’s coming to save the world from its sinful state.

Human Enlightenment once again to replace true Christian faith

The millennial instincts that seemed to take over America at the beginning of the 20th century were more about the rising ideals of social science, finding and putting into place the social formulas (always identified as democracy) that would by man’s own hand bring the world to perfection. In general, Americans did not reject the idea of a God in Heaven (although some did, especially among the rising group of Humanists). But that God once again, just like in America’s earlier Ages of Enlightenment, no longer played any kind of central role in bringing such perfection into being. Although most Christians would not have considered themselves Humanists in the precise way that others in fact did, there was something very Humanistic about their Christianity. Once again good works – rather than a deep faith or dependency on the Fatherhood of God, the direct counsel or guidance of Jesus Christ and the personal empowerment by the Holy Spirit – typically characterized such Christianity. Was it then truly still Christianity?

In any case, it was the call of democracy rather than God or his covenant with America that, through Wilson, called America to war in the early years of the 20th century, a war that unsurprisingly was totally needless and socially worthless – except that it turned out to be very costly to many young Americans. In any case, it disrupted post-war life in rural America and it sent many youthful urban Americans off in the Roaring Twenties in the search of some kind of spiritual high, one that possibly might be found in collecting material goodies – or just in abandoning social boundaries. But this quest for existential purpose, or even just psychological freedom, ultimately led nowhere.

The Great Depression of the 1930s ultimately terminated whatever it was that the Roaring Twenties was all about – and put America through a long period of major personal testing. No one was thanking God for this new boot-camp training that came their way. But it is hard to see otherwise, given the moral dissipation of the 1920s, how America, had it not gone through such toughening up, would have been willing – or even able – to take on, much less defeat, the two huge military empires of Japan and Germany.

Where will the tough social-moral discipline of the Depression '30s come from in the supposedly "Progressive Days" of the '60s?

So from a larger historical view, it is easy to see that only God, through the means of the Great Depression, could have imposed the necessary discipline that Americans themselves otherwise would have avoided at all costs. Had they not been put through this tough experience, they, like so much of the rest of Western Civilization, would most likely have simply capitulated to the German and Japanese Übermenschen.

And also, had they not become involved (involuntarily, of course) in this Second World War, eventually Russia would have ground down the vastly overextended German Empire and moved ever-forward to replace Germany as the dominating power over all of Europe. With that, Western Civilization would have come to a complete end. But apparently God had other plans for the West.

This time America came out of a huge war, not cynical this time, but indeed deeply committed to the call to save what they could of Western Civilization. And clearly God was understood by most Americans as playing a central role in that call. This is when Americans added to the Pledge of Allegiance the words "under God" in describing the America they were committed to protecting at home and defending abroad.

But how deep did that pledge go? How well was the dynamic behind it understood? Was this a renewing of the First-Generation attitudes and values of Americans or was it more of the order of Second-Generation Christianity – or even touches of Third-Generation Christianity? How much besides good works (importantly accomplished through regular Sunday Church attendance) did this Christianity involve? Better yet, what did their children, the Boomers, make of their Vet parents' Christianity?

The "Christian" identity begins to be dropped ... rapidly

In any case, as we will see, the speed by which the next generation dropped their Christian identities was breathtaking. Was that just because their parents taught them to look for Truth on their own … and not take it from some higher authority? But did the parents themselves not evidence real Christian Truth in the way they lived out their own lives – such as would have most certainly attracted even a free-rising generation such as the Boomers? Was their Christianity only a set of social and theological doctrines and principles? Was there any real power in it?

It is important to understand that Christianity is actually about a relationship with God. It is not a religious program. The essence of God in Christ is taught through visible example – by loved ones and by individuals around us in whom we sense the very spirit of Jesus himself. If that is missing in the life of the rising generation, then no amount of formal Christian training is going to turn them into true believers as adults. And sadly, way too much of Christianity in the 1950s was about good behavior – not about that vital, personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ, a relationship that develops through both good times and bad.

Eisenhower's warning on leaving office

Eisenhower, just prior to his departure from the presidency, warned Americans to be on the lookout for corporate tyranny right there at home in America. Probably at the time the vast majority of Americans had little real understanding of what Eisenhower was talking about. Certainly they could see some problems with the huge military-industrial complex that seemed to be driving the American economy, and thus also American society as a whole. But in fact, such corporatism infected every part of American life at the time – including its Christianity.

And ultimately, it would be against just such corporatism that the rising Boomer youth – and their intellectual tutors – would set themselves in full opposition. And with that, everything about the corporate Happy Days of the Vet world would come under full attack.

But such corporatism would sneak back into the American social dynamic – not through Christianity, or industrial corporatism, or the vast military machine. Those would be greatly undone by the Boomer-Intellectual anti-Establishment crusade. But that crusade would open the doors for something even more threatening to America’s way of life, of its democratic instincts – and certainly of its Covenant with God. The mid-1960s would see the beginning of the rise of the corporate superstate, the federal political machinery located in Washington, D.C. This institution would take over America’s instincts for self-government – and replace the system with a huge, incredibly expensive, bureaucratic superstructure, passing out entitlements as the fruits of democracy, entitlements that supposedly someone else would be paying for. Of course such a someone else would be simply the future generations of Americans, the ones stuck with an absolutely unpayable government-debt – the kind of debt that always in history crumbled any empire or kingdom that allowed its finances to fall so deeply into such debt. But the general American attitude would come to be "hey, if we don’t obsess about it, maybe it will just go away on its own!"

Where was God in all this?

Which raises the question: where was God in all this? Would he once again come to the rescue of his Covenant People – who now were oblivious to the Divine relationship that so many American leaders of the past had relied on to get America through yet another massive challenge to the nation’s very existence? Did America even deserve the privilege of God’s continuing protection? Or had America finally squandered that privilege? But if God was still willing to work with America, how much was it going to cost the nation? Something that could pull America out of its self-inflicted Fourth Generation mentality in fact could possibly take on such hard form that it would make even the Great Depression look like small stuff by comparison.

Go on to the next section: The Idealism of the Early 1960s

Miles H. Hodges

20. MIDDLE AMERICA COMES OF AGE

DEVELOPMENTS ABROAD

20. MIDDLE AMERICA COMES OF AGE DEVELOPMENTS ABROAD

Miles H. Hodges

20. MIDDLE AMERICA COMES OF AGE

DEVELOPMENTS ABROAD