Word: secularize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...growing success of the conservative seminaries directly reflects broader shifts in U.S. Protestantism. While liberal mainstream denominations have been shrinking, conservative evangelical churches report rising membership (and bank) rolls. Many liberals have become disillusioned with the church as an instrument of social reform and have redirected their money to secular organizations. Moderates have become disenchanted for other reasons. Union, for example, lost some longtime donors as it became increasingly involved in radical causes...
...members are beginning to recognize. In a survey of American-born parishioners last fall, Iakovos found, the "greatest need" cited by 87% of the respondents was for "more religious enlightenment and edification." The Orthodox, says Iakovos, "must not be afraid to break away from the masses," must become less secular, less materialistic, more concerned with the real meaning behind the formalities of their faith...
...appalling fact of life in today's East Village. Once a colorful and relatively innocuous capital of the young American counterculture, the East Village has declined precipitately in recent years. The flower people of the late 1960s, mostly middle-class kids trying to create a gaudy secular religion, have given way to a desperate culture of emotionally troubled rejects, largely from working-class and even ghetto families. Amphetamines, heroin and old-fashioned alcohol have generally replaced pot and LSD; violence has supplanted Aquarian love. Now the area is open to the professional pimp, who uses a combination of terrorism...
...court made clear that it was the strict faith of the Amish-and not mere "secular" disagreement with society's educational goals-that enabled the religious freedom guarantee to override the state's right to set educational standards. It also noted that the Amish sought exemption only from high school, not grade school. The decision will be small comfort to more modern communalists and dropouts who would like to get away from it all and educate their children in their own ways. Even so hallowed an anti-Establishment position as that of Henry David Thoreau, the court noted...
Though blacks have immortalized the blues and keened their sorrows in spirituals, they have also been immersed in the spirit of evangelical joy. The American black is steeped in Christian fervor, and though he may profess secular aims and agnostic convictions he is also a creature of the Gospel. Part of his being "rocks church" at an invisible but perpetual revival meeting. Some of the songs and dances in Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope comment very seriously on the social injustices still visited on the heirs of slavery, but the inner jubilation that ignites...