ABSTRACT
These developments, whatever truth there is in them, should not obscure either the founding impulses that produced fundamentalist religion or fundamentalism’s significant urban presence in the early twentieth century – at the exact time when immigration and industry were transforming American cities. This period of social change produced a number of innovations in American religion, and fundamentalism was but one such product. Thus, fundamentalism’s relationship to urban society is both foundational and deeply ingrained. It should not be ignored. While fundamentalist Protestantism did diffuse throughout the rural South and Midwest, it also maintained a significant urban presence.
