The Curious Path of Conservative Protestantism

Abstract

The effective origins of contemporary conservative Protestantism are found in the early nineteenth century, when an evangelicalism emerged and so influenced that century. This outlook, both theological and moral, dominated until after the Civil War, when forces of immigration, urbanization, and education severely challenged at least the theological domination. By early in the twentieth century, therefore, Protestantism had split into two factions: a liberal wing that, by accommodating theologically to those forces of modernity, remained dominant, and a conservative wing that seemed, by the 1920s, to have submerged from public life. To understand not only the resurgence of conservative Protestantism but also its unusual political turn, therefore, requires consideration of moral—not just theological—factors peculiar to America since the 1960s.