Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular

The fate of the Christian project in any time and place depends on who holds the franchise. Evangelical Protestants wrested control from the rival, “mainline” Protestants by providing white Americans with a way to be counted as Christian while avoiding the challenges of an ethnoracially diverse society and a scientifically informed culture. The mainliners insisted Christians must face these challenges, even at the cost of enabling the growth of post-Protestant secularism and thereby diminishing Christianity’s size and public role.

David A. Hollinger is a former President of the Organization of American Historians, and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His nine books include Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (1995, 2000, and 2006), Science, Jews, and Secular Culture (1996), After Cloven Tongues of Fire (2013), and Protestants Abroad (2017). He is Preston Hotchkis Profess of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.