Journal Articles

American Protestant Moralism and the Secular Imagination: From Temperance to the Moral Majority

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Modern secularity as a historically specific hegemonic social formation that prevailed in the U.S. in the mid-20th century depended on and was, in part, constituted by the exclusion of fundamentalists and their Bible-based moral rhetorics from public life. This essay argues that the movements for temperance, prohibition, and prohibition repeal were an important context in which the political and cultural predominance of white theologically conservative Protestants was made, unmade, and finally gave way to emerging secular voices that repudiated Protestant campaigns to "legislate morality." Science, reason, and an etiquette of civility and ecumenicism came together in the prohibition repeal movement as integral elements of the nascent normative religiousity and public morality that we know retrospectively as modern secularity.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Social Research: An International Quarterly

Call Number

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Publisher

New York : The New School., 2009

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0037783x

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Content Type

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Edition

Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1277 - 130

Subject(s)

The Religious-Secular Divide

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