On April 8, 1966, Time magazine’s now-iconic front cover asked in stark red font over a simple black background, “Is God Dead?” Though reactions focused more on the cover than the cover story—which, like most titular questions in journalism, was answered with a “no”—the pushback was strong and the topic was a cultural sore spot. Religion’s influence was in decline, and it was broadly assumed across most scholarly fields that a modernizing world would become a secular one, too. It became clear in about a decade that this rapid kind of secularization was a simplistic view; American Evangelicalism rapidly expanded in the late 70’s, steered by Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority.
A cautious and historical view is important when discussing the decline of religion, since religion always proves more robust and complicated than it’s given credit for. At least as far back as Comte and Marx in the 19th Century, scientists and thinkers have been announcing the imminent death of religion. After a few hundred years, these voices start to resemble doomsday cultists—the end is often heralded but never delivered.
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