The Sixties Spiritual Awakening [Hardcover]

Robert S. Ellwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1994

For many people, the '60s were a period of reawakening. The political and cultural upheavals of the time had a tremendous effect on the spiritual lives of Americans, and American religion in its various forms and incarnations has not been the same since. Ellwood pulls together the changes that occurred in organized and disorganized religions during this turbulent decade.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This book is breathtaking in its scope. Carrying readers on a magical tour of religious expression from the civil rights movement and Vatican II to Woodstock and Death-of-God theology, Ellwood traces the centrality of religion in the American '60s from the stability of its institutional expression in the early years of the decade to the fragmentation of organized religion and the advent of countercultural spirituality. Each chapter explores the ways in which the objective authority of organized religion was increasingly displaced by the subjective experience of the new spirituality. A helpful feature of each chapter is a discussion of books of the time that had significant cultural and religious impact. A major weakness, however, is the book's lack of attention to the music and film of the period. (While the songs of the Beatles, the Byrds and Bob Dylan, among others, expressed a deep spirituality, films like Mike Nichols's The Graduate pointed to the bankruptcy of traditional expressions of religion, etc.) Even so, Ellwood's account of the religious character of the '60s is a story grippingly and passionately told.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The 1960s have been described as a period of renaissance that allowed for individuality and a fluidity in ideology that has had a fundamental impact on religious structures. Ellwood has captured and divided the decade into four periods to present a condensed chronological survey of the formation of postmodernist pluralist countercommunity. His overview is supported by citations from numerous texts and publications. "Counterpoint" boxes interspersed throughout the text give information on activities having additional impact on the shift of the cultural mentality. From political demonstrations to drug use to the sexual revolution, the reader is taken through important movements that transformed and split the religious. For larger collections.
L. Kriz, Sioux City P.L., Ia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press; 1St Edition edition (June 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813520932
• ISBN-13: 978-0813520933
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,618,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Examination, to be read along with Porterfield., March 14, 2005

By 

Christopher W. Chase "Christopher W. Chase" (East Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sixties Spiritual Awakening: American Religion Moving from Modern to Postmodern (Hardcover)

Robert S. Ellwood wrote his volume on religion in the 1960's before his volume on the 1950's, but its clear from his other work that he has long been interested in underground and alternative religious movements, as well as documenting periods of intense religious ferment. And in most treatments of American Religious History, the 1960's serve a crucial turning point--although often this takes the form of a mantra-like recitation of the fact that official church attendance declined dramatically for the first time, with many assumptions and little investigation into what that might actually mean.

Ellwood's argument builds on the edifice of research constructed around historical theories of modernism and postmodernism. Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and many others have written on the transition or development of postmodernity, a condition in which the demands of subjects for change and unity both outstrip institutional abilities to satisfy them. Thus, an era of radical skepticism begins toward overarching metanarratives, such as universal progress, and the unity of all knowledge. As an example, Ellwood credits the radical ideological leveling of the "elite and marginalized" of the civil rights movement (a progressive, optimistic modernist movement itself) with undercutting modernism--calling for more change than "could be met by modernist means."

Or so the story goes. The 1960's, with its fracturing of New Deal Liberalism, the rise of both Liberal and Conservative Imperial Presidents, and the massive forced mobilization of allegedly "free" citizens to fight wars on behalf of the U.S. government, becomes this 'pressure cooker' for 1950's ideology to sprout new and inventive religious and cultural communities to replace older ones found wanting. Of course, the liberalization of the Catholic Church with Vatican II, and changes in domestic immigration laws made some of this change possible as well.

Ellwood follows a familiar strategy - "divide and explain." The 1960's are divided into four sub-eras---The '50s Under Pressure, Secular Hope, The Year of the Avatars (1967) and the Bitter Years.

As Ellwood rightly points out, the same years that saw declining church attendance, also saw an explosion of several important factors--the social gospel in action, especially in the Selma March, radical theology, entheogens, the Death of God movement, popular Gnosticism, and the first flowering of contemporary feminist and Pagan religion in the U.S. To this end, we must look not only at church attendance, but at the sometimes nascent but ultimately powerful and transformative cultural beginnings (or resurgences, since there has always been a personalist strain of religion among the American unchurched)

And that in fact is where Ellwood goes, discussing in depth the secularization thesis and Death of God theology (as the last outburst of religious modernism) as well as the growth and development of 'fringe' sects during those mid-60's years of 'secular hope'--Krshna Consciousness, Church of Satan, the Acid Church, other forms of chemical/entheogenic mysticism, and even the role of William Blake revivals.

At the end of the day, Ellwood sees several themes emerge from the 1960's--including a rediscovery of natural religion, a "discovery of the world" as the place of theology and practice, an ongoing quest in freedom, and the shift to a radically nonconformist paradigm. While some of Ellwood's points here are crystal clear, others need more demonstration. But it is clear that by all this, Ellwood does not mean a trend towards politically liberal religion. On the contrary, the most popular forms of Pentacostalism, or what he calls Political Christian 'Shamanism' (including Barry Goldwater's candidacy) and deconstructionist theology all have spawned reactionary movements in their own right. Whatever the final religious upshot is from the 1960's is, its' still undetermined.

This book is best read along with Amanda Porterfield's "The Transformation of American Religion"

4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entheogens: Professional Listing, May 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sixties Spiritual Awakening (Hardcover)

"The Sixties Spiritual Awakening" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy."