Religion in the 40's & 50's

[Weston]

Hi there,

Hope I'm not breaking a cardinal rule here, but from what I've seen Fedora Loungers seem to be a level headed bunch. I'm curious about what the state of popular religion was in the 40's and 50's....I've heard attendance was sometimes a more social phenomenon in some cases...

In the movies, I've always enjoyed the portrayal of religion in the classics. Comfort was available in God if wanted, but was not forced if unwanted. It just seemed people were more comfortable with it...no condemnation either way.

Again, not trying to start a huge debate or fight, and in the interests of full disclosure, I am in Seminary.

 

[shamus]

Hope I'm not breaking a cardinal rule here, but from what I've seen Fedora Loungers seem to be a level headed bunch.

I guess to start off with.. what is your definition of "Level headed bunch?"

 

[Lincsong]

?????

What's popular religion?

 

[jake_fink]

What do you mean by "hi there"?

 

[Weston]

Ok, by means of clarification:

1. The crowd here seems to remain calm, and not go to extremes most of the time. (Puns and silly posts excepted! )

2. By "Popular Religion" I refer to Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or Judaism. The big three recognized the most back in the day (I use these three since they were the categories for Chaplains in the 40s).

3. A form of greeting, approximating the Southern "Howdy."

That enough?

 

[StraightRazor]

On second thought...

 

[Weston]

Straight Razor-

Please, please don't be offended by what I am about to say:

It is my intention to steer away from personal opinion about the state of religion or commentary there upon. I am strictly interested in the opinion of religion during this specific time period. While I respect your opinion, it is the airing of opinions unrelated to the question that may cause an unwanted argument none would benefit from.

I can see how I didn't make that clear, and I apologize for any armchair quarterbacking of this post!

Respectfully,

Weston

 

[StraightRazor]

Did all of that come out of my mouth?? I cant answer your question, so I'll shut up! You would probably need to ask someone who was actually around during that time period for a decent answer to your question. I'm not sure how many people here qualify.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

On a lighter note,......

A Rabbi, a Priest, and a Minister walk into this bar. The bartender looks up at them and says,...

"What is this, some kinda joke?"

 

[magneto]

Caution: long-winded historical blather ahead.

(Note: I'm only focusing on Christianity because it's the majority religion in the U.S. ...)
Great thread, Weston...okeh. From my reading--and as evidenced by info such as reported religious affiliation/denomination, church attendence (how often, and where), etc--the mainstream, non-Evangelical Christian denominations (I include Catholicism here for sake of argument) were much more "popular" in the 40s and 50s than they are now. (In fact it is cited by some that it's precisely mainline Protestantism's increasingly "liberal" (religiously and/or politically) orientation in the tail end of that era which caused the mass movement we have seen in the past few decades in America, where people are deserting those trad Christian churches in droves for the "upstart" hardline born-again/Fundamentalist ones.)

It seems incredible that now --if I recall correctly--a majority of American Christians identify as Fundamentalist/born-again...whereas this was *not* the norm back then *at all* (although American Christian Fundamentalism dates back to the 1840s...anyway.) Fundamentalists' minority presence in the "Golden Era" (as opposed to the ascendency of the more, er, "laissez-faire" brands of Christianity) doubtless contributes to that quite different national attitude toward religion you've picked up on. In a nutshell, conscious religious affiliation and demonstration of faith (chruch attendence, having religious institutions be part of one's life) were more common, but less, er, charged and, dare I say, less "small-e" evangelical than it is nowadays, where there seems to be an uncomfortable schism between those who are "saved" and those who aren't.

Apologies in advance for sweeping generalizations and to anyone I've offended!

 

[Lincsong]

Elmer Gantry

Was a very controversial film about the state of "popular" religion in the 1920's. It dealt with the whole shebang; evangelism, holy rollers, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Free Masonry. By the way what denomination seminary are you attending? Roman Catholic? Episcopal? Other Protestant?

 

[clevispin]

I'll speak generationally to this (I'm 39 yr old) -

Grandparents from the mid-west. All Catholics and fairly pious-Sunday mass and the women praying the rosary fairly often. Priests & nuns in the family.

Parents - still in the mid-west transitioned from Latin to Vatican II as young adults. Both went to Catholic colleges and were democrats, folk music, Pat Boone etc. Father fell away from the church. Mother prays the rosary every day and has a fiesty liberal bent to her religion.

Brothers - All on the east coast and all went to parochial schools. One is not religious, one went evangelical and one went back to the Latin mass of yore.

I can remember as a boy during the holidays tha my grandparents would come to stay with us. My grandfather (who barely finished grade school) would share my room. I remember entering my bedroom one night and finding my 70 yr old grandfather on his knees alongside the bed saying his prayers. This was a revalation to me. He was a very simple man - tho his religion was part and parcel part of him and had not really changed for him over the course of his life.

Any study of christianity in the period you cite really ought to include Fulton Sheen. He had a huge impact on the popular culture of the day. I've gotten the impression that the cultural shift that blossomed with the JFK administration was also shared in the religious realm. Young leadership, optimism beyond The Bomb, etc. The sixties ruined everything.

m

 

[Lincsong]

Portrayals were definetely more respectful

In the movies the clergy were given a lot more respect than today. You wouldn't have some pill popping Episcopal priest like in NBC's Book of Daniel or that filthy portrayal of Roman Catholics that Christopher Reeves did in Monsignor. There were movies like Boys Town, the priest in Angels with Dirty Faces etc. In the broader social arena there were more distinctions and prejudices amongst the relgions; Jews were denied admission to organizations and housing, Roman Catholics were generally looked upon with suspicion by Protestants.. Inter marriage was not encouraged.

 

[Weston]

For those interested, I'm attending Nazarene Theological Seminary. We're a mainline Protestant denomination believing in several peculiar things (and that word is chosen on purpose! ) you can PM me about.

I find all this fascinating, as from a Nazarene viewpoint, we're fairly conservative, but are nowhere near fundamentalist. My professors are fairly concerned at Christianity's public image swinging from "We don't care about anything" to "Absolutely everything in the Bible is the direct word-for-word dictation of God, and Jesus spoke in English, darn it!" view.

It's a troubling time in some ways. I suppose one could imagine if there were thousands of people who proclaimed their allegience to "Fedora Lounge" without reading the website, and then those same people began picketing stores that sell modern clothes in our name!

Enough of my editorializing, trying to get back on topic! Thanks for the answers so far...

 

[yachtsilverswan]

Evening Weston - let me take a shot at your original question:

I was raised in the suburban South in the 1950's and generally agree with your suggestion that religion in the South then may have been a more casually social experience for many families than now.

But I would caution against drawing inferences from Hollywood portrayals from the 1940s and 1950s. Hollywood was, and is, different from mainstream America. Hollywood portrayals, in my opinion, exaggerated the social context of 1950's religion because Hollywood was, and is, unfamiliar and uncomfortable with religious spiritualism.

In the 1940's, during the War Years, the Church became the center of life for many wives & mothers whose husbands were away at War. The Church provided emotional and financial support to struggling families. The Church provided Daycare for children whose Mothers were now in the WWII work force (think Rosie the Riveter). Strong moral indoctrination was an expected part of Sunday School and Church. Shame was a useful tool in enforcing moral order: It was shameful to be unwed and pregnant - girls were often sent out of town to live with a distant Aunt until the child was born and surrendered for adoption. It was shameful to be drunk as an adult (teens were given some license to "sow their wild oats"). It was shameful for an adult male to be unemployed. It was shameful to be dirty in public.

In the South in the 1950's, everyone went to church on Sundays, and almost everyone in the South went to a Baptist or Methodist Church. Our town of 60,000 had one Catholic Church and one Jewish Synagogue. But despite the markedly lopsided Protestant population, Catholic and Jewish practices were widely respected. For example, every public school cafeteria in the South served fish on Fridays, to meet Catholic dietary practice. During Hanukkah, Christians substituted for Jews in 24-7-365 Public Safety & Broadcast Jobs. Conversely on Christmas, Jews would substitute for Christians: we would hear different voices on radio and TV on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as Christian broadcasters took the day off and Jewish friends volunteered to take their place. Similarly, Jewish policemen took the Christmas shifts for their Christian counterparts. It seemed to be a routine courtesy that operated casually.

Despite the easy tolerance and accommodation, the South was very clearly Protestant. Every town had Christmas decorations in Public areas - both secular Santa decorations and Biblical manger scenes. "Merry Christmas" was the universal greeting, unless you knew someone to be Jewish - and then it was "Happy Hanukkah." If non-Christians were in any way offended by these practices, they were personally and publicly quiet about the slight.

Religion in the 1950's South had a broader influence on daily life than today through Blue Laws. These were local and state laws that prohibited the sale of certain goods and mandated the closing of certain businesses on Sundays. For example. movie theaters, swimming pools, and golf courses in my town were closed - because good citizens were supposed to spend Sunday quietly with Church and Family. You couldn't buy tools, paint, or lumber on Sunday because Sunday was a day of rest.

The current evangelical movement in the Protestant South began partly as a rejection of the free sex hippy movement of the 60's and the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision in the early 1970's. Protestants were told (with some justification) that their moral order was under attack from a more militant youth movement and from their own government. Brown v Board of Education, bussing, and integration uniformly resulted in white flight from the large cities, producing an even more segregated South. Whites moved to the suburbs, leaving Blacks concentrated in large cities (like Atlanta, Birmingham, Columbia, Jackson, and New Orleans). From that concentrated base, Black politicians consolidated the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s to form secure black political power bases in the 1970s and 1980s.

Richard Nixon's electoral Southern Strategy began to change the South politically from uniformly Democratic to uniformly Republican at the State and Federal level. The large cities remained Democratic and transitioned from white power structures to black power structures. In the 1980's Reverend Jerry Falwell's ability to mobilize white Protestants to support Republican candidates (particularly President Reagan) solidified the South as a more evangelical and more unified voting block. That continues today as the South is a large Red State voting block.

Religion in the 1940's and 1950's was the center of social order in the South. That role has now been supplanted by Government. I'm not at all sure we are better off for the change.

 

[Weston]

Dang man! That's the exact sort of thing I was looking for. Man, you guys are tops. Keep the comments rolling, it's rare to find this kind of thought put into responses....Good stuff.

 

[jake_fink]

Portrayals were definetely more respectful

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the movies the clergy were given a lot more respect than today. You wouldn't have some pill popping Episcopal priest like in NBC's Book of Daniel or that filthy portrayal of Roman Catholics that Christopher Reeves did in Monsignor. There were movies like Boys Town, the priest in Angels with Dirty Faces etc.

That is especially true as of 1933 when the Hays Office under Joseph Breen began to implement the Production Code as a reaction to pressure from the Catholic Legion of Decency (and other supportive church leaders and groups). The code was not touched until it was tentatively modified in the early fifties. Then came the sixties... and all hell broke loose.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

But seriously, that's a good serious answer, and my observations exactly .

(Note: I'm only focusing on Christianity because it's the majority religion in the U.S. ...)
Great thread, Weston...okeh. From my reading--and as evidenced by info such as reported religious affiliation/denomination, church attendence (how often, and where), etc--the mainstream, non-Evangelical Christian denominations (I include Catholicism here for sake of argument) were much more "popular" in the 40s and 50s than they are now. (In fact it is cited by some that it's precisely mainline Protestantism's increasingly "liberal" (religiously and/or politically) orientation in the tail end of that era which caused the mass movement we have seen in the past few decades in America, where people are deserting those trad Christian churches in droves for the "upstart" hardline born-again/Fundamentalist ones.)

It seems incredible that now --if I recall correctly--a majority of American Christians identify as Fundamentalist/born-again...whereas this was *not* the norm back then *at all* (although American Christian Fundamentalism dates back to the 1840s...anyway.) Fundamentalists' minority presence in the "Golden Era" (as opposed to the ascendency of the more, er, "laissez-faire" brands of Christianity) doubtless contributes to that quite different national attitude toward religion you've picked up on. In a nutshell, conscious religious affiliation and demonstration of faith (chruch attendence, having religious institutions be part of one's life) were more common, but less, er, charged and, dare I say, less "small-e" evangelical than it is nowadays, where there seems to be an uncomfortable schism between those who are "saved" and those who aren't.

Apologies in advance for sweeping generalizations and to anyone I've offended!

It seems more people attended church in the past because they were expected to, whereas today they attend because they want to.

 

[Lincsong]

It really wasn't attacked like today

You didn't have militant atheists attacking Christmas Parties and decorations or the phrase "Merry Christmas". The different denominations may not have agreed on the others interpretations but there wasn't the wholesale attacks that we have today, where if a business closes between noon and 3 p.m. on Good Friday some nut case yells "anti-Semite!" or if Roman Catholics have ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, idiots ask "why is there dirt on your head?":arated:

 

[shamus]

Wow! Are there really militant atheists roaming the streets?

I guess the big question is... since every army is fighting for God, who are they fighting for?