ABSTRACT
Protestant cultural histories dominate America's public life, its vocabulary, its practices. But there are many forms of Protestantism. First, there is the classic mainline Protestantism of New England, nourished today in churches like the Episcopal, the United Church, the northern Presbyterians and institutionalized in the elite prep schools and the Ivy League. Second, there is the populist tradition of the lower classes, spread across the South, the Bible Belt, and the small towns and rural areas. Third, there is the denominational, commerce-instructed moralism of the middle-class heartland churches. There is a fourth current in Protestantism, not permanent and dominant, but cyclical: an Awakening type, a leader who rises up out of Protestantism and calls for general political reform. Fifth, there is the black Protestant experience, much more communal, much closer to emotion and raw experience, much more interpersonal and vibrant with living networks than that of most of the white Protestant stocks.
