LaVey's Church emerged at a point in American history when Christianity was on the decline as many of the nation's youth broke away from their parental faith and explored alternative systems of religiosity. The milieu in which LaVey's Church was operating was dominated by the counterculture of the 1960s; his Church reflected some of its concerns – free love, alternative religions, freedom from church and state – but ran contrary to some of the counterculture's other main themes, such as peace and love, compassion, and the use of mind-altering drugs. He expressed condemnation of the hippies; in one ritual he hung an image of Timothy Leary upside down while stamping on a tablet of LSD.