For those of you who were not yet alive in the sixties and seventies and before, one generally did not encounter proselytising in public and religious protesters or fundie politicians, especially in day to day life. The exceptions were Krishna's on street corners and in airports being colorful, loud, and weirdly amusing/annoying, as were hippie Jesus Freaks, who were super liberal "peace-and-love-and-flowers, man". The fundies who did make a lot of noise got some press coverage. McCarthy-ites would say "godless communists", but their main focus was secular patriotism, and everyone was scared of the USSR because of the Cold War hype about us bombing each other into annihilation.
The Catholic church was very active in publicizing two things that were pissing them off, almost equally; that the peace sign coincidentally looked like an alleged witch craft symbol of a broken upside-down cross, and after Roe V Wade, abortion being legalized. Otherwise, churches were mostly quiet social institutions that did charitable work, depending on denomination. The adage "Never discuss sex, religion or politics" in public and at social gatherings was generally followed. People didn't immediately ask you what church you belonged to like they do now, because it was considered very rude, and a sign of a fanatic or nosy snob (whether your church was a wealthy denomination in your town was of interest to society climbing snobs back then).
The Civil Rights movement and anti Vietnam war protests were very prominent in the news. My republican parents supported both, believe it or not, since back then conservatism was about business and finance, not rights issues. They were WWII generation and had seen enough of war to hate it very much. Really, the series Mad Men is as accurate a portrayal as a dramatic fiction can be in showing what people generally talked about and cared about back then.
