I started teaching in 1957 -- but it wasn't til the mid-70s that students started to be offended by my sacreligious remarks. In the rural grade school I attended in the '30s & '40s sneers at creationism were perfectly safe. In my 10th grade biology (1944) class in a small town high school evolution was taken for granted. It would have been a real shock had someone objected.
My own subjective impression from the '50s is that they represented the highwater mark of secularism in the U.S. There is a lot to accuse the '50s of, but religiosity is not one of them (at least in comparison with the last quarter century). Things may have reversed in the late '50s -- but my impression is that the real change for the worse began in the early '70s & climaxed in the mid '80s.
Carrol
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> >The 1950s were a boomtime for
> >religion.
>
> And when, since the founding of the USA, has there been a bear market in piety?
>
> Doug