Not all the way over, just the past 50 years or so. In 1962, the view from the Christian pew was on the up side. Vatican II was just beginning. Change was in the air. Protestant theology encouraged dialog with the secular world. Catholic theology encouraged the church to open its doors.
Then, President Kennedy was assassinated and the United States entered a period of dislocation and discombobulation. The country descended into the morass of Vietnam and the civil strife it generated. The "establishment" had gotten the country into Vietnam, and, as a result, all features of the "establishment" were called into question, including (so-called) "traditional values."
Supporters of traditional values were on the defensive. When Jimmy Carter's White House convened a conference in families in the late 1970's, many attendees who were supportive of traditional values were shocked that the conference was not intended to shore up the nuclear, male-headed family.
If they couldn't count on the government, conservatives flocked to religion, fueling the rise of evangelicalism. This had less to do with Christian theology or teaching per se than it had to do with trying to organize and rally shocked traditionalists to resist cultural change.
Public dialog got hijacked by culture wars, in other words. Instead of Christianity opening its doors in dialog with the world, the church became dominated by those who saw themselves as in fundamental opposition to the culture and the world.
This faction has never represented a majority of Christians, and doesn't still. What they had was a powerful, technologically-sophisticated media presence coupled with an alliance of convenience with conservative political organizations. This had its effect and Christianity became associated in the public mind with cultural conservatism.
Millions of people have left the church as a result. Since the ascendence of the Francisco Franco wing of Christianity, the number of people who self-identify as atheist and agnostic has tripled. Rejection of the church is rapidly on the rise. In the United States alone, roughly 10% of the entire population are former Catholics. Young people today associate the Christian faith with negativity and prejudice. (As Johannes de Silentio has said, "At least when we mainline protestants were running the show, people still believed in God.)
So could we start over? Could we go back to 1962? Could we dust off the documents of Vatican II? Could we start reading Tillich again, and Teilhard and Congar and Danielou and Lubac and Bultmann? Could we just forget about the last 50 years of unpleasantness and go back to a time when the church was considered a progressive and compassionate force in the world?
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