ABSTRACT
Ministers,” wrote journalist Walter Lippmann in 1914, “are as bewildered as the rest of us, perhaps a little more so.” Given the historical context, it was a startling observation with terrifying implications: that as Americans faced industrial strife and the specter of European war, they would find their religious leaders paralyzed and confused. Lippmann linked society’s future to a regime of disinterested technocrats whose authority rested on the cognitive superiority of science. Only the rigorous application of scientific management principles, Lippmann suggested, could save society from disintegration.
