Caught in the 1950s
The problem with idolizing years gone by
There is a tendency for many today to look back with nostalgia to times when things were better. In many ways, this is a natural tendency in people, but it also leads us to overlook the problems in that era. In historiography, this is often referred to as the “golden age fallacy.” We have all seen it, someone has a time in history that they look to as an essentially ideal time and wishes we could return to that era. It could be the early church, the Middle Ages, or the days of Little House on the Prairie. However, while whatever time we are looking at might have been essentially free of this or that problem that is plaguing us today (but often these times did have forms of these same problems), these other eras had different problems. So, for instance the days of Little House on the Prairie may not have had the challenges of urbanization we have today, but does anyone think it would be good to go back to having many women die in childbirth and high infant mortality?
Why the 1950s?
For many in our world today, and especially in the Church, the 1950s can serve as such an ideal time. I am using the 1950s as a shorthand for a little longer period from about 1945 to the mid 1960s. A niche fondness exists for the movies and TV shows from this era, as evidenced by the number of Bible studies based on the Andy Griffith Show.[1]
This era was, in many ways, a high point for Christianity in North America. My own confessional tradition, Lutheranism, rose in membership from about five million members in the US in 1940 to over nine million in 1965.[2] In the late 1950s, new Lutheran congregations opened at the dizzying pace of an average of one every 54 hours![3]
During this time, the face of congregational life also changed. Mirroring the greater culture, there was more wealth and prosperity. As more women joined the workforce, the corresponding drop in volunteers and its accompanying increase of income meant that congregations now started to hire staff to help the pastors. Likewise, the size and nature of youth groups changed, with a growing emphasis on games and wholesome entertainment for the youth.[4]
As churches grew in size and finances, there was a corresponding increase in programs and groups within the churches. Likewise, larger parachurch organizations started to form or take off during this period. For instance, the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League was founded in 1942,[5] World Vision International was formed in 1950,[6] and Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) was formed in 1951.[7]
This time was also a boon for higher education. In 1944 the US passed the G.I. Bill that granted money to veterans to attend higher education. This spawned such growth that church schools mushroomed. During this era, Lutheran colleges were thrown into a form of crisis for a while as they tried to expand to house all these new students.[8] Scholarship also boomed, with a dramatic increase in those receiving terminal degrees. The magisterial “American Edition” of Luther’s Works, which was a joint venture by Concordia Publishing House and Fortress Press started to roll off the presses in 1957. A little after this time, the “Concordias” started to shift from preparing church workers to a broader liberal arts education.[9]
We’re not in the 1950s anymore.
Looking back at all that, it is easy for churches to look back to the 1950s wistfully. Rather than opening new churches at a shocking pace, now the trend has shifted to closing churches. Rather than having church-based colleges and universities grow, many are shrinking. The once burgeoning “Concordias” of the Missouri Synod have seen a rash of losses, with the Concordia Universities at Selma, AL (2018), Portland, OR (2020), and Bronxville, NY (2021) all closing and the one at Ann Arbor, MI needing to be taken over by Concordia Wisconsin in 2013 to prevent its demise. In another form of loss, Concordia University of Edmonton, in 2016, formally announced its secularization, and in November, the Board of Regents of Concordia University, Texas voted to sever governance from the Missouri Synod.[10]
Today, so much of the discussion within churchly circles is lamenting what is lost. Rather than growing in membership and influence in the culture, the church is quickly receding in North America. I have heard many argue that we need to recapture how we went about things during the 1950s.
The 1950s were the anomaly.
The problem with this thinking is that the true anomaly was the 1950s. For a variety of reasons, during that relatively short time the church and the broader culture enjoyed a growth and optimism that is not historically normal.
While WWII was the largest war in history, and the US and Canada both participated in the war, the attack on Pearl Harbor was the only attack on either country during the war. This meant that the US and Canada received the benefits of providing food, arms, and a safe place for training for our allies while the devastation to cities, factories, farmlands, and non-combatants was borne by others. Then, following the war, with the need to rebuild Europe, again it was North America who made and sold the materials needed. With this prosperity and the G.I. Bill, suddenly far more people could afford higher education than ever before.
Added to this were the feelings of gratitude and being blessed by God that arose from the unique historical situation. First, the Great Depression was very much a part of the living memory of the adults. Add to this the gratitude for protection from attack during the war plus the feelings of moral superiority arising from helping free much of the world from the evils of “Fascism,”[11] and we got a mix that propelled more people into churches. If this wasn’t enough, this was the post-war Baby Boom. Since many young adults tend to wander away from the church to then return when they have children, the Baby Boom brought a sudden influx of many young families into the churches.
All of this means that, even if we leave aside the philosophical shifts between then and now, many differences exist in the situations from the 1950s to today. This means that any hope of returning to a 1950s-like world includes, hidden behind it, the hope for another Great Depression, followed by a World War instituted by nefarious regimes that devastates much of the world and world economy while leaving ours intact. While many today, including myself, look back at the Second World War and admire the feats of heroism and strategy, no one should hope to return to such a time. Yet, we could not get the 1950s without the Second World War.
Let us return to what the Church has always been.
It is never good to look back at any time in history and try to recreate it. We are given the days that we live in, and not another. In the spirit of Mordecai, we are placed where we are “for such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14). We can no more go back to the 1950s than return to Ancient Egypt. However, we can learn from those who have gone before us.
If, as I maintain, the 1950s was an historical anomaly created by a unique convergence of events, then that hardly seems like a time that we should use as our paradigm. Rather, when we look more broadly over the history of the Church, we find that the local church has usually not put a large focus on events and groups. Rather, the core has always been gathering for worship, particularly on Sundays. Add to this the Reformation’s emphasis on education in order that everyone can read the Bible and “the head of the family should teach … to his household.”[12]
Is there anything wrong with youth groups and Vacation Bible School? Of course not, and I am not arguing against these. If anything, we should work to restore these to the focus on Bible study and Christian growth first, as they were before the 1950s.[13] Is there anything wrong in Christian universities? Absolutely not, but maybe we should focus more on Christian formation and church workers than providing liberal arts education that is largely parallel to that in countless other schools. Is there anything wrong with planting churches? NO! We should seek to share the Gospel and establish churches. But, if we put our hope and focus on finding the right program, the right system to restore the church of the 1950s, we are way off the mark. If anything, we should not look to the 1950s, but well before that to when the church was simpler, and there was a greater focus on educating our children in parochial schools. After all, it was the spiritual and educational strength that was built in the time before the 1950s that enabled the Church in North America to take advantage of the unique opportunities of their time. But most of all, we must cling with a sure hope to our true foundation, Jesus Christ our Lord, because He will build His Church “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt 16:18)
[1] The Mayberry Devotional podcast continues to this day. https://imayberry.com/podcasts/category/mayberry-devotional/
[2] Mark Alan Granquist, Lutherans in America: A New History (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015), 263.
[3] Granquist, Lutherans in America, 268-69.
[4] “A Short History of the Walther League,” Walther League Redux, 7 December 2022, https://waltherleague.com/2022/12/06/a-short-history-of-the-walther-league/.
[5] https://www.lwml.org/history
[6] https://www.wvi.org/our-history
[7] https://www.cru.org/us/en/about.html
[8] Richard W. Solberg, Lutheran Higher Education in North America (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1985), 303-17.
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordia_University_Chicago, https://www.cuw.edu/about/history.html, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/concordia_university/.
[10] https://www.concordia.edu/about/PRES-Memo-11.8.22.pdf
[11] During WWII the Allied leadership lumped all of the Axis powers, including not only Italy and Germany, but also Japan under the title of “Fascist.” Anthony James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009), 10.
[12] Martin Luther, Luther’s Small Catechism, with Explanation (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2017), 13.
[13] “A Short History of the Walther League.”
Perspective! We all need the right perspective! So happy to have found you here! I love the way you communicate. I think we are entering another age of growth in the church, different though it may be, but this is going to be a very challenging and exciting time!