Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston on 25 February 1964 for the World Heavyweight Championship. He then confirmed rumors that he had converted to the Nation of Islam. He was stripped of his title in 1967 when he refused induction into the military for religious reasons. The Supreme Court overturned that conviction in 1971, stating that he had been improperly drafted.

In 1966 Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer of Emory University published The Gospel of Christian Atheism.

In 1961 Jim Bakker married Tammy Faye LaValley. They joined Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network in 1965 and in November 1966 began their successful religious talk show on that network.

In 1967 David B. Berg, operating originally out of the Light House Mission coffeehouse near the pier in Huntington Beach, California, began to convert the hippies in the area. He later turned his mission into the Children of God, one of the Jesus People groups.

In...