Back in 1960, the largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God, had 508,000 American members; by the end of the 1970s, its total U.S. members and “adherents” had grown to 2.6 million. The great pioneers in freakishly innovative Christianity, the Latter-day Saints, had grown slowly during the twentieth century. But the Mormons had a great 1960s and ’70s, with U.S. membership almost tripling. In fact, their strenuous outward normality as individuals—so cheerfully hardworking, sober, and square, so un-1960s—was another way outré beliefs became normalized.
