Three national conferences on aging between 1950 and 1971 responded to the early twentieth century's radical changes in labor practices, life expectancy, and cultural modes of understanding aging and the nature of citizenship. My goal is to show that the conferences reveal how these shifts in aging and labor impacted the relationships among religion, science, politics, and national identity in the U.S. I primarily employ a historical methodology, and the bulk of my original primary research centers upon the rich archive of written documents produced before, during, and after the conferences. Each of these conferences brought together citizens, experts, and government and industry representatives. Together they generated policy recommendations and articulated national beliefs and values in a highly visible public forum. Conference framers claimed authority by constructing the meetings as embodiments of democracy that represented the unaltered voice of the people.

Thus, conference participants and the authors of their reports performed religious work that is important to the study of religion in America but that has, to date, not been explored. I argue that the conferences sought to reestablish order over cultural chaos by joining their practical agenda with the creation of a more far-reaching national narrative about aging. Through them, the nation came to develop and articulate a new myth of aging that drew upon the deep well of national myth and symbol. The new myth's overarching goal was to protect aging citizens' independence and dignity. Life in retirement should blend leisure with "useful" activity contributing to self and community. Society was obliged to assure the minimum requirements of dignity for those unable to maintain this level of independence.

While their often utopian vision sought to avoid the dehumanization of the elderly that would come from their exclusion from American life, inconsistent treatment of race and economic status threatened to deepen that exclusion for many. The conferences and their new myth make ideal candidates for religious studies analysis because they renegotiated what it meant to be human in changing cultural circumstances.