But then during and after the 1960s and ’70s, supernatural beliefs intensified, proliferated, and achieved permanent traction. This time as never before, America’s renegade magical-thinking extremists won. False ideas from the past about the primordial past (creationism) suddenly had a huge dedicated constituency, as did wild ideas from the past about the predestined future (the end-time). And the conviction that the present is just like the magical past of Jesus’s time—tongues, faith healing, personal messages from Heaven—spread like mad.
