AHC: Atheism/Secularism a cornerstone of 60s American Counterculture

Is it possible to prevent the rise of interest in spiritualism and eastern religions in 60s counter-culture, and instead have the youth of America rebel against the conformity of the 50s by embracing atheism and secularism? What would have to happen to make this so, and what would the effects on American culture be?
 
I think you MIGHT need a pre-1900 POD here, and an America with a state church, which eventually engenders a general cynicism about religion as just another wing of the bureaucracy, OR a violent revolt against state religious authority, which makes militant secularism into a major trope of the American left and allied movements.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you can do. I think the roots of American religiosity run pretty deep, and it's going to take a bit more than a decade, however tumultuous, to neutralize them as an influence on the national psyche.
 
Alex:

I've never read the book, but Stephen Kent's From Slogans To Mantras might be of interest to you. From Amazon...

This book takes a provocative look at the early 1970s - an often overlooked yet colorful period when the Vietnam War and student protests were on the wane as new religious groups grew in size and visibility. Certainly, religious strains were evident through postwar popular culture from the 1950s Beat generation into the 1960s drug counterculture, but the explosion of nontraditional religions during the early 1970s was unprecedented. This phenomenon took place in the United States (and at the edges of American-influenced Canadian society) among young people who had been committed to bringing about what they called "the revolution" but were converting to a wide variety of Eastern and Western mystical and spiritual movements. Stephen Kent maintains that the failure of political activism led former radicals to become involved with groups such as the Hare Krishnas, Scientology, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, the Jesus movement, and the Children of God. Drawing on scholarly literature, alternative press reportage, and personal narratives, Kent shows how numerous activists turned from psychedelia and political activism to guru worship and spiritual quest as a response to the failures of social protest - and as a new means of achieving societal change.

link
 
No, you could do it, with a good POD.

As per the OP, just instead of the OTL spiritualism and eastern religions, just have early music icons go hard core atheist.

Perhaps the POD could be some early rocker who died instead become this TL's Beatles with a message of anti-religious hedonism and effects many who come after.


Now, the obvious impact IMO, would be an even worse resistance from Mainstream America.
 
No, you could do it, with a good POD.

As per the OP, just instead of the OTL spiritualism and eastern religions, just have early music icons go hard core atheist.

Perhaps the POD could be some early rocker who died instead become this TL's Beatles with a message of anti-religious hedonism and effects many who come after.

We might have some respectful disagreement about why things happen in history. Personally, I don't think the "turn to the east" in American youth culture was simply the result of a few popular rock stars going to India with the Maharashi. Those guys were just the most visible examples of the trend.
 
We might have some respectful disagreement about why things happen in history. Personally, I don't think the "turn to the east" in American youth culture was simply the result of a few popular rock stars going to India with the Maharashi. Those guys were just the most visible examples of the trend.


Trends can be overwhelmed by other, new movements.
 
Alex:

I've never read the book, but Stephen Kent's From Slogans To Mantras might be of interest to you. From Amazon...

snip

This certainly looks interesting and I'll definitely be looking into it. It also gives me a few ideas. If one of the main driving forces behind the turn towards spiritualism was the failure of more radical political movements in the US, then one thing that could be done is to wank the various left-wing movements in the US in the 30s to gain a greater degree of popularity and influence, creating a broad-base left of FDR bloc in American politics that is able to push through more radical measures. Given that quite a few leading figures in the non-Communist radical left at the time (as well as populist who proposed general leftist ideas) were openly devout Christians, most notably Norman Thomas, I can see Christian Socialism playing a big role role in this left-wing alliance. Once the 60s rolls around the New Left rises and begins to criticise the role of religion in maintaining the mainstream right and holding back the mainstream left, in particular on social issues. I could also see characters like Hubert Harrison experiencing a bit of a revival, especially amongst African-American intellectuals.
 
Six of One

Having been there, done that, the Eastern Religions thing in the Sixties was pretty much a marginal fad. Oh sure, there were fashions in clothes and music and slang, and you had the Hashbury flakes, but underneath, atheism and secularism was what the whole countercultural-youth "revolt" was based on. It was just never spoken aloud because Mom and Dad were churchgoers who wouldn't be happy if Dick and Jane went THAT far.

And, as noted, after the political rebellion flamed out after Kent State, everything from Jesus Freaks to Hare-Hare prospered.

What you would need would be a more philosophical and vocal rejection of religion, sufficient to make it acceptable to a majority of the faddish "revolutionaries". (Nietzsche for choice, were he not tainted with an unjust association with Nazis.)

And what might happen is to advance a lot of current trends in social and political activism.

Or not.
 
Having been there, done that, the Eastern Religions thing in the Sixties was pretty much a marginal fad. Oh sure, there were fashions in clothes and music and slang, and you had the Hashbury flakes, but underneath, atheism and secularism was what the whole countercultural-youth "revolt" was based on. It was just never spoken aloud because Mom and Dad were churchgoers who wouldn't be happy if Dick and Jane went THAT far.

And, as noted, after the political rebellion flamed out after Kent State, everything from Jesus Freaks to Hare-Hare prospered.

What you would need would be a more philosophical and vocal rejection of religion, sufficient to make it acceptable to a majority of the faddish "revolutionaries". (Nietzsche for choice, were he not tainted with an unjust association with Nazis.)

And what might happen is to advance a lot of current trends in social and political activism.

Or not.

I think Nietzsche would be WAY to individualistic a thinker to have wide appeal to the more communitarian ethos of the hippies and counterculture generally. I agree that he didn't really mean it when he said that we should help the weak to perish(but was rather asking us to think about the power games that are involved when we categorize certain people as weak and in need of compassion), but his whole style, and his(admittedly few and far between) political pronouncements are guaranteed to be anethema to the Woodstock generation.

The biggest problem for the OP, I think, is that atheism and anti-religion don't really give you anything to rally around. Most people who stop believing in God are just gonna leave it at that and go on to other issues, they're not gonna march in protests and write folk-songs about their opinion that some particular thing doesn't exist. Even John Lennon's Imagine posits the rejection of religion not as an end in itself, but as a prelude to building a material utopia.

You do have the the American Humanist Movement, rooted in early 20th Century scientific liberalism, but they never caught on widely, and have had little following among the youth of any time period.
 
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