The myth of the American church of the 50’s blown up:
A taste:

It was what more sober church people might have expected. The church of the fifties had generally identified itself with civic purposes such as patriotism and moral respectability, along with national recuperation and prosperity. As those purposes began to wear thin, like a good-luck coin fingered too long in the pants pocket, could one doubt that a broad search for new purposes would commence? And not merely at the national or hierarchical level?