It was not just in the realms of foreign policy, national economics and presidential politics that America found itself fractured, confused and at a great loss.  At the very opposite end of the social-political spectrum of American society, at the level of the grass-roots American family, things were just as fractured and confused. The divorce rate suddenly skyrocketed as spouses simply up and abandoned marriages.  The huge legal impediments traditionally making divorce extremely difficult, and thus largely unthinkable, were swept away as the "progressive" concept of "no fault divorce" spread throughout the nation in the 1970s.

It was indicative of the shift away in American culture from a focus on personal responsibility to a focus on personal freedom instead.  It was all very Boomer in spirit and logic, although it certainly reached deeply into the professional classes as well.  Everyone loved their new freedoms.  Or so it seemed at the time.

Boomer independent-mindedness had by then degenerated into a crude narcissism, through such widely-supported (among the Boomers at least) ideas as "do your own thing," or "look out for Number One."  Movies supported the notion that the individual (men at first, women joining them in equal numbers later) who threw off the numbing constraints of bourgeois marriage were the true heroes. Those who continued to submit to the social expectations of a lifetime commitment to a marriage were portrayed as truly either sad victims or fools.

A very popular TV series of the 1970s, All in the Family, made the "typical" American family the object of intense ridicule.  The Vet head of the household was depicted as the perfect male chauvinist: stupid, arrogant and a huge bigot (by supporting traditional social and moral values, exaggerated and lampooned constantly by the program).  The humble housewife was the constant victim of the husband's chauvinism, though she possessed a simple wisdom entirely lacking in the husband.  Their Boomer daughter and her husband were also flawed characters, though their flaws were minor in comparison to those of the arrogant father and wimpish mother.  America laughed, not realizing how this aided in undermining the respectability of the one institution most sacred to the Vet generation, and the key source of America's grass-roots democratic empowerment since its founding centuries earlier, the American family.

In keeping with this rising Boomer ethic, the primary ideal of the young American contemplating the future was not a family and a family-supporting job, but instead a supposedly high-status "professional" career (though maybe some kind of a family eventually).  Young men no longer saw themselves as breadwinners whose primary function was to work a job that could put food on the family table. Instead, they were to look after the success of their personal careers first and foremost.  Marriage was merely an afterthought, to be fitted around the all-important career that a young man pursued.  This of course was the complement to the idea that if family got in the way of your personal destiny, you could always ditch the family.

But it wasn't just young men who became infected with the idea, though it seems that they were the first to really take off on its logic.  Women too began to look at their futures not as mothers or wives, but as professionals.

In the early 1960s Betty Friedan had written something of an Emancipation Proclamation for women, announcing in her book, The Feminine Mystique, that life in the modern home was a stifling trap for women.  Women must break free from the inanities of housework and seek their professional destinies outside of and well-beyond the home.  Her book quickly spread itself among Boomer college girls as if it were a new Bible.

By the 1970s the feminist movement had not only an anti-marriage quality to it but also a clear anti-male quality as well.  Feminists declared that women were also a minority group, comparable to the Blacks who had suffered so much at the hands of the "Dead White Males" who had too long dominated history.  Men were dictators, oppressors, chauvinists unworthy of female adoration or attention.

Not surprisingly, lesbianism soon grew apace with the fiercely anti-male portion of the feminist movement (Friedan was at first a strong opponent of this development, though she later reversed her position and became a supporter of lesbianism).  Because of this stream of anti-male invective coming from the feminists, feminism made it about as impossible for women to want to form a loving relationship with a man as Nazi ideology during the Hitler years had made it impossible for Aryan Germans to form a loving feeling for Jews.  Such is the power of unchallenged ideology.

For men there was no male equivalent of a Betty Friedan.  There were no clear voices of what being a male was supposed to mean in the new Boomer era. Meanwhile, the male character or personality was chipped away at by feminists as if being male were somehow a serious social problem (a rather common occurrence on American college campuses, especially as America advanced through the 1980s).  Just as women were now encouraged to develop the instincts of the male warrior-hunter, men were supposed to prove their enlightenment by assuming the feminine qualities of the nurturer.  On college campuses everywhere, sports programming for men was cut back in order to make way for equal sports programming for women (required under Federal Title Nine Act).  And the military was now opened on something of an equivalent basis for women, a clear demonstration that there was nothing particularly unique in being a male (but also nothing particularly unique in being a female).

For the men the sexual confusion was far greater.  The female goal was fairly straightforward: do what the men have long been doing, and do it better than them.  For men, despite the attempt to make men more domestic (baby changing-stations in men's public bathrooms), such an idea never really caught on. Mostly they lost sight of where, as men, they ought to direct themselves.  As the 1980s advanced, women soon started outnumbering men within the college population, as more highly-focused women pushed ahead in the quest of professional careers rather than families.

Indeed, social norms of any kind became perceived as a form of tyranny to which Boomers felt that they definitely should not have to submit.  Whether or not sexual norms and taboos were vital for the survival or even just health of a society was not seriously considered by the Boomers, so automatically did they form a natural antipathy to the very concept of taboo or social restriction.  Not surprisingly sexual behavior in other forms once held to be well-outside the bounds of acceptable behavior also started to spread.  Voices soon were heard calling for the permissibility of man-boy associations¹ (offering in support of this idea the reminder that the Greek and Roman men both had their boys to amuse themselves with).  In this, the homosexual community was getting a bit ahead of itself.  In any case, acceptable or not, adult sexual interest in youth (among others, by priests) seemed to have grown sharply with the rise of the new culture.

¹Probably this is one taboo that no Boomer group or Gen-Xer group will be able to topple – though there have already been quite a few surprises, so such predictions are not very reliable.

Christians supposedly had long understood the dangers of embracing the culture of the larger surrounding society.  The Bible spoke clearly about the need to avoid such an embrace, both in the Old Testament stories of Israel and its struggle with this issue, and in the New Testament gospels and letters of the apostles, especially those written by Paul, who constantly pointed out the grave dangers of embracing "the ways of the world."  New England, in fact, had been founded by Puritans precisely to escape the dominant English culture of the day and instead provide in America a way where they could better live to such a Christian understanding, that is, live in line with the precise teachings of Scripture on this matter.  And the various Christian Awakenings that had rolled across America from time to time afterwards were built around the awareness of Covenant America that it was time to repent of the sin of having gradually fallen back into the embrace of the materialistic Secular-Humanist world by which the Adversary (Satan) was trying to lead America away from its Christian faith and the social-intellectual-spiritual disciplines that accompanied that faith.

Now with the rise of Johnson's totally Secular Great Society program in the mid-1960s, with its seductive proposal of bringing America to perfection through the work of enlightened government bureaucrats, from the point of view of many Christians, the time had come for yet another "Great Awakening."

Of course, as in former times, the idea of revival was not met with enthusiasm by all those who called themselves Christian, which at the time was still the vast majority of America's adult world.  But in many cases, such Christianity was merely the American civic religion of the day, based on regular attendance at church and the celebration of key holidays such as Christmas and Easter.  And now more recently, being "faithful" in such religious exercise, this large Christian section of America (mostly the Vets) consequently did not see any particular need for spiritual revival.

On the other hand, one particular branch of American Christianity – the Evangelical, Pentecostal or Charismatic movement – demonstrated a growth reminiscent of the earlier Great Awakenings, although on a much smaller scale.  The chief characteristic of this movement was the matter of how the Holy Spirit was once again "gifting" the church with the classic powers of healing, prophesy, and just miracles in general.  There was no particular centering point, no particular religious community or denomination that pushed this development, but instead this development took place in various individual ministries found in various Christian denominations.  And it took on all kinds of different forms.

Pentecostals emphasized the speaking in tongues – unusual prayers and prophetic pronouncements spoken while a person was under the influence of the Holy Spirit, uttered in a "language" that required someone else to translate it into the English language to the others present at the time.  Pentecostals claimed that it was such an event as the speaking in tongues that marked the spiritual "rebirth" of a person.
Charismatics took up a view similar to the Pentecostals, although less insistent that tongues be the absolutely necessary sign of such an infilling by the Holy Spirit. Charismatics took a broader view that Spiritual rebirth could come with other giftings or signs, especially in the form of healings through prayer, but also in other areas such as powerful preaching, teaching, even music ministry, especially music of the more contemporary variety (guitars, electronic keyboards and drums instead of just traditional pipe organs).  The charismatic movement eventually could be found in all the denominations, especially the Assemblies of God, Methodists, Episcopalians, and, surprisingly enough, the Roman Catholics (although Catholicism had a strong and quite ancient medieval tradition of mystical teachers and writers of a similar spirit).

Certain individuals and groups would loom large in this movement, such the televangelist Oral Roberts with his Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, the musician and author John Wimber and his Vineyard Church movement originating in California, the Calvary Chapel movement founded by Chuck Smith, also in California, but soon spreading in the form of hundreds of new churches across America.

Other denominations took a very strong position against just such a development, absolutely insistent that such spiritual gifts ceased with the end of the 1st century (thus those holding to this view became termed as "Cessationists"), kicking charismatics from their Christian fellowships in the belief that such giftings were actually deceptions issued by Satan himself.  The Baptists in particular had a very hard time with the charismatics, claiming that a true Christian had all that was necessary to live the true Christian life in and through Biblical knowledge – and that alone.  Any claim of finding spiritual guidance beyond that was purely evil. Presbyterians also tended to be resistant to the charismatic movement, although more as a matter of style than theology, similar to the reaction of the Old Siders and the Old Lights to earlier Awakenings.

Evangelical Christianity attempted to bridge all these differences by accepting the spiritual giftings of whatever variety God gave a person, and then putting those to work by taking the power of the gospel to the larger world, to help bring the world to Christ.  In other words, extensive missionary work was encouraged to be taken up by those whom God had gifted with the powers of salvation (of whatever form).

Clearly by the 1970s Christian growth was to be found mostly within this more active Charismatic-Evangelical branch of Christianity – but sadly not at the rate that the older denominations were slowly dying.  These denominations were simply dying at the same rate that their older members were themselves passing away. Not much new blood was coming into these older churches.

Meanwhile, feminists saw new opportunities to fill the professional ranks of the clergy of these older denominations.  But this too did not seem to have much of an impact in terms of spurring new growth in those churches.

In this rising post-modern age, Christian America was finding itself able to survive to some extent largely because of the vitality of these less-orthodox, evangelical movements.  But clearly Christianity was losing its foundational position in American society.  Would the evangelical movement be enough to save Christian America?  Only time, and God's intervention yet again (should he chose to do so), would give an answer to that question.

The Supreme Court meanwhile moved Humanism or Secularism (two different labels for pretty much the same thing) to the position of being America's official "non-religious" religion!  In 1971 the Supreme Court finally took a stand completely on the side of Secularism (in opposition to Christianity's former cultural-social position) with respect to what could be taught to America's children in American public schools.  In the Lemon v. Kurtzman decision of that year the Supreme Court declared that it was unconstitutional to reimburse nonpublic schools (most of which were Catholic) for the salaries of teachers who taught secular material in these nonpublic schools, or even for the purchase of secular textbooks and for secular instructional materials.  Allowing support of even non-religious educational programming in religious schools would violate the First Amendment, which (according to a more "progressive" Supreme Court) strictly forbids the state to get involved in the matter of religion in any form, even if remote, or for religion to have a place in the functioning of the state, which by this time had expanded its jurisdiction to virtually every aspect of social life in America, despite the very clear limitations placed on the federal or national state by the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.

But the real impact of the decision was in its clarification of what ideas and programs the state or government could allow, and what must be disallowed, by conducting the so-called "Lemon test."  The government (national, state and local) could set laws and guidelines for policies and programs on purely cultural matters. However:

1. The government's action must have a legitimate secular
purpose;

2. The government's action must not have the primary effect
of either advancing or inhibiting religion;

3. The government's action must not result in an "excessive
entanglement" of the government and religion.

By the early 1970s the story of the Puritans was beginning to be revised ("historical revisionism" as its proponents termed it) to read in such a way that Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were the real heroes of the story, and the Puritan elders were the authoritarian villains.  This was reflective of the rising value system that the Boomers and their young intellectual mentors in the universities were putting in place in America.  The emphasis of what was right and good fell entirely on the way individuals personally viewed things.  The very idea of social authority itself seemed to these basically Boomer Idealists (or Humanists) so authoritarian, so tyrannical, so evil (like America's "imperialistic" presidents).

To this rising group of Idealistic Humanists, America represented personal freedom, not social cohesion.  In America, right-minded individuals supposedly knew instinctively the difference between the good and bad.  And in a truly free society, the kind that America was striving to become, there would be no need for authoritarian authority!  Authoritarianism, after all, had been the single most dangerous threat to America since the end of World War Two.  Wasn't that, after all, what Orwell's 1984 was all about?  Wasn't it just such cultural authoritarianism that Miller's highly popular literary work The Crucible was warning the nation about?  Vigilance was needed lest authoritarianism find its way into American society in the innocent guise of being simply good social order.  Personal freedom must be defended at all costs.

And so the Boomers gave very clear demonstration that their childhood indoctrination had indeed succeeded very well in shaping their development as young adults.  It had succeeded beyond all expectations!

So it was now with this rising generation that the voice of the community was viewed as unnecessary, irrelevant, and even oppressive.  Thus long-held community standards of morality⁴ were to be dismissed; such things as the open sale of pornographic literature, the living together of unwed couples, even a rather breezy attitude toward adultery (euphemistically termed "open marriages") were not only to be allowed, but even in some cases actively encouraged as a sign of the new freedoms of the times.  Older community standards were viewed as archaic leftovers from the more repressive culture of the now-vilified Puritan past.

So, if all Americans were invited to become totally self-absorbed in the way they went at life, who or what then was to look after the welfare of the entire community? The answer was simply: "the government."  That, said the Boomers, is what taxes were for: the care and nurture of the nation by public officials, paid professionals whose job was to lift the responsibilities of community care from off the shoulders of the citizens, so that they could give themselves more fully to the pursuit of their own personal happiness.

In short, the government was no longer the American people themselves, but instead political professionals in high places who would do the thinking and directing of American life from above, as these more enlightened experts saw the need for governmental action, whether congressmen, federal judges, or federal technocrats working within the enormous (and growing even more enormous) Washington bureaucracy.

There are a number of cultures that allow parents to kill their children should the situation require it.  In Roman society a father could kill his son or daughter up to age seven without any questions from the Roman public authorities.  In Islamic society a father may (or must) conduct an honor-killing of his daughter or son, usually for transgressing a Muslim sexual taboo.  But Christianity long took the position that the killing of a child, even an unborn child, or a child at any stage of life from the moment of conception onward, was to commit the terrible sin of murder.  Human life was sacred and, although carried into existence by way of a woman's womb, ultimately belonged to no one but God, for it was God that ultimately ordained the course of a person's existence, from conception onward.

But as the Boomers moved away from Christian social restraints into the realm of personal sexual "freedom," not surprisingly unwanted pregnancies exploded in number.  The simplest way to get rid of "the problem" was for the woman to undergo an abortion.  But this procedure was highly illegal throughout the country. So, the Boomers acted to do something about this unwanted restriction on a woman's rights to an abortion.

The critical event in the abortion controversy confronting America occurred in 1973 with the highly controversial Roe v. Wade case.  The case started out in 1970 as a challenge to Texas's anti-abortion laws, and made its way up to the Supreme Court.  In early 1973 the Court announced its decision, declaring that the many state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional because they deprived the woman of the "right of privacy" (explaining this right through employing an extreme logical stretch of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause).  The Court then laid out specific terms as to how abortion could proceed, dividing the pregnancy period into three separate trimesters.  Each trimester allowed abortion under increasingly restrictive standards.  However people might feel about the Court's decision (the feminists were overjoyed; Christian traditionalists outraged) this was a classic case of judicial legislation, typical of the times, such legislation depending entirely on the political makeup of the Supreme Court.  And everyone connected with the world of American politics knew that.

⁴These were not just idealized social norms dreamed up by intellectual social planners, but instead time-tested rules for life, ones that had proven themselves through long social experience as highly important for society's success.