Faith did not sit outside the 1960s
Religion in 1967 was not simply a conservative backdrop to the counterculture. Mainstream churches were changing from within, many clergy were active in public protest, and a good number of young Americans were looking beyond the faiths they grew up with. Much of this had begun earlier than 1967, and some of it, such as the Catholic reaction to the contraception debate, came later. The picture was mixed, and attendance and attitudes varied widely across denominations.
Vatican II and its aftermath
The Second Vatican Council met in Rome from 1962 to 1965 and closed in December 1965. It permitted the Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin, encouraged a larger role for lay people, opened a more cordial relationship with other Christian churches and with Judaism, and issued a statement on religious freedom. The council ended before 1967, but 1967 was a year in which its effects were being felt in parishes.
Changes to the liturgy were introduced in stages, and experiments with guitar music and informal services appeared in some places. Reactions ranged from enthusiasm to dismay. Some Catholics welcomed the changes as overdue, while others felt that familiar traditions were being taken away. Debates over authority and conscience grew, and they became sharper in 1968 after Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, a development that belongs to the following year.
Clergy in the civil rights movement
Ministers and priests had been central to the civil rights movement from the start. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister, and the movement’s meetings were often held in churches. In March 1965 many white and Black clergy from around the country travelled to Selma, Alabama, after the attack on marchers, and a white Unitarian minister, James Reeb, died of injuries sustained there. For many ministers the experience politicised their view of what a church was for.
That commitment carried into later years. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had been supported by multi-faith coalitions, and religious groups continued to be involved in housing and poverty campaigns.
Clergy and the war
Opposition to the Vietnam War brought clergy into politics in a new way. Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam formed in 1965, bringing together Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders, and in April 1967 King delivered his Beyond Vietnam address at Riverside Church in New York under the group’s auspices. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was among the best-known Jewish voices against the war.
The Catholic left produced some of the most dramatic action. In late October 1967, a group including the priest Philip Berrigan poured blood on draft records at a Baltimore Customs House, and was arrested. His brother Daniel Berrigan joined a similar action at Catonsville in May 1968, again after the period covered here. These cases helped make the idea of religious civil disobedience familiar.
Ministers in the Haight
In San Francisco, some clergy took an interest in the new neighbourhood. Glide Memorial Methodist Church, which had already worked with marginalised communities, was among the congregations involved in outreach to young people, and ministers from several denominations offered meals, shelter and counselling to those arriving in the Haight-Ashbury district. Some were motivated by compassion, some by curiosity, and some by a wish to connect with young people who had left church altogether.
Not every congregation was supportive. In many parts of the country, the arrival of hippies, drugs and communal households was seen as a moral danger. Debate within denominations over how to respond was common.
The turn to Eastern religions
The most visible religious change among young people was the surge of interest in Asian traditions. This was not new: Zen had attracted writers and artists since the 1950s, and Alan Watts was a popular interpreter. By 1966 and 1967, interest widened to Hindu-inspired groups. A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in New York in 1966, and Hare Krishna chanting soon became part of the hippie scene, with a temple opening in San Francisco in 1967.
Music helped. Ravi Shankar’s performance at Monterey in June 1967 was widely noticed, and George Harrison’s use of the sitar had already brought Indian music to many listeners. In August 1967 the Beatles attended a lecture by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the teacher of Transcendental Meditation, and travelled to meet him; they then went to his ashram in India in early 1968.
Why people looked elsewhere
Observers have offered several explanations. Some young Americans felt that organised churches were more concerned with respectability than with spiritual experience. Psychedelic drugs, for some, seemed to open questions about consciousness that Western churches did not obviously answer. Other seekers were drawn to practices that emphasised direct experience, meditation or community life.
Historians generally treat this as part of a long American pattern of religious experiment and revival, rather than a sudden break. The 1960s added new options and made them more visible. In the years that followed, interest in meditation and Eastern thought spread widely, and some of the energy later flowed into new evangelical movements as well.