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387 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1970)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0387 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD This is the third number of THE ANNALS to focus attention on religion in Amer- ica in the past several decades. To read the previous numbers is instructive, for they not only indicate the kinds of assessments that were made of particular aspects of American religion in their times, but are also, to a surprising extent, documents of American religion in their times. Each reflects the aspects of religion that ap- peared to be interesting and important to relatively objective observers who determined which topics were worthy of extensive articles. In the decade of the 1950's, the religious revival in America crested, and began to decline. In the decade of the 1960's, religion in America is in a state of radical change; indeed, the word crisis is perhaps more appropriate with reference to religion than it is with reference to some other aspects of our culture and society. In its state of crisis, American religion has become a far more interesting phe- nomenon than it was during the decade of its highest institutional success. Al- though I have not made an accurate accounting, my impression is that religion has been far more newsworthy in the past ten years than in the previous decade. The Vatican Council, clergy participation in the civil rights movement, the death of God theology, the tensions between Christians and Jews after the June War, the involvement of religious leaders in the peace movement, the revolution in morality -all of these and others received attention in the daily press, in the weekly news magazines, and in journals of commentary and opinion. These events have been far more memorable than the assemblies of the World Council of Churches in Evan- ston and New Delhi, the death of Pope Pius XII, and national meetings of rabbis, all of which were dutifully reported by the press as significant events of their time. In selecting the topics for this number, I sought to find those that touched on what were, in my judgment, the most significant events in American religious life, as well as those which would give a comprehensive coverage. This number of THE ANNALS would be more complete if twenty articles could have been written, for some interesting items are left out and others only touched on. For example, the growth of academic study of religion, and its maturation into significant scholarly disciplines, with new or upgraded journals, gets no attention. The development of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and its Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is only one instance of this important trend. Although this number has an outstanding essay on the state of Black Theology, there was not room for an essay that would deal more particularly with what is happening to black churches during this decade. What sociologist Robert Bellah has called civil religion is mentioned in at least two essays, but an assessment of what happened to it in the decade is missing. A study focusing on religion on the campuses, a bellwether of wider currents in the culture, would have added to the richness. Although I regret the necessary limitations of coverage, I recommend the reading of all the essays here published. They differ in style and in amount of citation; they are written by persons in different disciplines-sociology, history, theology, and the like; they vary in mood from objective reporting to involved criticism and ix

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