The mid-1960s was the peak of American liberal political power and public trust in government institutional solutions. It resulted from the combined effects of several atypical religious, cultural, and political currents.
In Christianity there was the social gospel – the Protestant theological movement originating in late 19th century in response to the excesses of the gilded age arguing that the church’s primary mission was to reform society and eliminate social sins like poverty, racism, and war.
There was also the Black Prophetic Tradition which regarded the struggle for racial, social, and economic liberation as an absolute divine command. Additionally, the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s shifted Catholic focus toward a “preferential option for the poor,” motivating activists to fight for labor rights, affordable housing, and anti-poverty programs.
Concurrently, many American Jews, still deeply affected by the Holocaust, viewed the pursuit of civil rights and universal human dignity as an absolute moral imperative to “repair the world.” There were also some new secular ideas like John Rawls’ Social Contract Theory arguing that a just society must ensure that the least advantaged are protected, and Secular Humanism which argued that morality stems from human empathy and our shared responsibility to alleviate suffering in this world.
These religious and secular beliefs all helped create an environment where progressive policies and programs received the necessary support to be implemented. But sadly, as we now know, they were to be short lived. The support for progressive policies which came from religious leaders and secular thinkers did not in any way challenge the misanthropic view of human nature and the belief in contra-causal free will still widely held by most people.