Faith in the 1960s by Sally Carpenter
Most people see the 1960s as a time of social turmoil, a rejection of traditional values, rebellion and an attitude of “please yourself” and “turn on, tune in, drop out.” However, in Middle American, the mindset among the common folk was more like the 1950s. My new retro-cozy series, the Psychedelic Spy, is set in a small rural Southern Indiana town in the 1967—much like the hometown where I grew up during the 1960s. In a town of 10,000, we had about 30 Protestant churches and one Catholic parish and elementary school. The town had at least one black church, a small AME (African Methodist Episcopal) congregation. The nearest synagogue was 30 miles away, so the city’s religious makeup was pretty homogenous. The public schools in my town never scheduled activities on Sundays or Wednesday evenings because those were “church times.” In deference to the Catholic students, on Fridays the school cafeteria always served fish sticks (that tasted like cardboard)—even though after ...