The Sixties' False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Postmodern Policy-making

Abstract

Writing in 1978 about the 1960s, William McLoughlin saw America in the midst of the fourth Great Awakening in our history. Awakenings are “periods of cultural revitalization that begin in a general crisis of beliefs and values and extend over a generation or so, during which time a profound reorientation in beliefs and values takes place. Revivals alter the lives of individuals; awakenings alter the world view of a whole people or culture.” To put it another way, awakenings are revelatory times when large numbers of people anguish over and eventually search out new self-understandings as individuals and as a society. They are like a convulsive quickening in the cultural womb.