In the 1960s hippies were in revolt against mainstream American culture, its values, and its practices. Naturally, they borrowed from other countercultures that preceded them, especially from the Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, but the big hippie idea was self-emancipation from the larger culture. To understand that revolt, it is necessary to begin with a brief discussion of mainstream values as they existed after World War II. During the Fifties it was widely held that American society had reached a mature age of consensus in which conformity to mainstream values and practices was all but universal. Most World War II veterans and their wives valued conformity, and those who dared to disagree often found themselves ostracized or denounced as communists, communist sympathizers, or dupes. Nonconformists could be committed for life without trials to mental hospitals, where they often received involuntary shock treatments. Political conformity was matched by calls for artistic and literary conformity. Abstract artists were suspected of subversion, and magazines or books that pushed against cultural norms risked prosecution or being banned from stores.

What, then, did most Americans believe in the Fifties? They believed in God, country, work, and family. They practiced those beliefs by attending churches and synagogues in record numbers, although attendance fell by the end of the decade. Religion was traditional, especially among the quarter of Americans who were Roman Catholics. Living within a pre–Vatican II worldview that encapsulated nineteenth-century values, they sent their numerous baby boomer children to conservative, nun-dominated church schools. While Catholics and Jews were joining the middle class in large numbers, many suburbs, country clubs, and colleges practiced open anti-Semitism. White ethnic tensions had subsided, but they still existed. Mainstream white Protestants – Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Methodists – had large numbers, enjoyed high social standing, and appeared frequently on radio and television, whenever clergy were sought for interviews.