April 23, 1972

April 23, 1972 was a Sunday around the world. Above the fold, the biggest headline was about the Apollo 16 lunar mission. While most Americans perused their papers, a few others were out for a hike, walking up what was described as a "hill" on the moon. This being 1972, the only news they would have heard was whatever their coworkers at NASA decided to share. Imagine going all the way to the moon just to unplug and get some exercise.

Walk In The Park

Apollo 16 was the penultimate mission of that era. Crewed by John Young, Charles Duke Jr., and Thomas Mattingly II, the astronauts collected 209 pounds of regolith samples during the nearly 11 day mission.

Photograph and mission figures: note 1.

Among the stories running in the New York Times was an update on the Democratic Party's primary elections, the ongoing spring offensive by the North Vietnamese, and the latest missile tests being conducted by the Soviet Union. Analysts at the time thought that the Russians were showing strength to counter President Nixon's "get tough moves," which included, among other things, improving Israel's military.

If you were a thorough reader of the Abilene Reporter-News, you would have seen two stories pulled from the AP wire. "Methodists Ask War Materiel Work Halt" reported that United Methodist leaders had voted to ask companies to stop providing technology and equipment to the US military for operations in Southeast Asia. The resolution passed after a compromise that left the companies unnamed. The article named them anyway: General Electric, Honeywell, International Telephone & Telegraph, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. The Methodists joined other religious organizations opposing the war in Vietnam—primarily mainstream Protestant groups. Southern Baptist evangelicals and the Catholic Church were able to look past their ecumenical differences and support the most hawkish policies in Vietnam for fear that losing there would lead to Communist hegemony.

The United Methodists have been opposing war for decades. The Methodists' Social Principles still consider war deplorable. In 2003, during the Iraq War, Methodist Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher wrote to President Bush urging that "every possible means to prevent war will be pursued"—language nearly identical to their 1972 Vietnam stance. In 2025, the Council of Bishops issued a similar call for peace in the Middle East. Same church, same position, fifty years apart.

What's more interesting is the split within American Christianity that this vote represented. While Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans opposed the war, Southern Baptists overwhelmingly supported it. A 1967 survey of messengers who stopped at a booth at the Southern Baptist Convention found two-thirds saying the United States "should do whatever is necessary to win the war." By 1968, 75% of Baptist pastors felt the United States "could not afford to lose in Vietnam," and 69% supported escalation.

In 1972, it was the wealthy establishment churches—Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists—pushing back against the war, while working-class Southern Baptists supported it. This created a crisis. Many Protestants, alienated by their churches' opposition to the war, left mainline denominations for evangelical congregations. That migration built the foundation of modern conservative Christianity and its alliance with military hawkishness. The positions haven't changed in fifty years. What changed was which denominations dominated the "Christian" microphone.

Sandwiched between the Methodists story and the headline, "Famous War Mother Dies" was a brief item titled "West Virginia Okays Amendment." This was the Equal Rights Amendment, which read: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." The idea was already 50 years old—the original ERA was introduced in Congress in 1923. The House passed it in October 1971, and in March 1972 the Senate approved it 84-8, sending it to the states for ratification.

If you're wondering which number amendment to the Constitution the ERA is, the answer is no number. It was never ratified. Thirty states approved the seemingly straightforward concept, but the mid-1970s saw Phyllis Schlafly enter the fray as the voice of the STOP ERA campaign. The STOP ERA campaign argued the amendment would lead to gender-neutral bathrooms, same-sex marriage, and women in combat. Political scientist Jane Mansbridge later endorsed the view that the ERA would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 without Schlafly's early and effective opposition. Instead, it stalled at thirty-five states, three short of the required thirty-eight.

Schlafly opened speeches with: "First of all, I want to thank my husband Fred, for letting me come—I always like to say that, because it makes the libs so mad." She had degrees from Washington University and Radcliffe, a law degree, ran for Congress twice, and built a national political organization. She spent decades arguing that women should stay home. Thirty-eight states have now ratified the ERA, most recently Virginia in 2020, but it appears the American Congress will have to start all over again—the final deadline was missed in 1982.

Stranger violence, like robberies, muggings, and random attacks was newer, more difficult to avoid, and generated more fear than crimes between people who knew each other. The 1972 respondents were living through the beginning of what would become the worst crime wave in modern American history.

In 2023 fears for personal safety spiked to the 1972 number again, despite the decades long downward trend in violent crime. By 2025, that number had receded to 31%, more in line with the mid-1960s. FBI data showed a 4.5% decrease in U.S. crime in 2024. New York City recorded 391 homicides in 2023 (roughly 4.7 per 100,000)—down from 1,691 in 1972. National homicide rates had fallen from their 1980 peak of 10.2 per 100,000 to about 5.7 in 2023.

The Marshall Project found that people's crime perceptions are now deeply influenced by partisanship—they report feeling safer when their political party controls the White House, regardless of actual crime statistics. In 1972, people were afraid because crime was surging. In 2023, people were afraid even though crime had been falling for thirty years.