ABSTRACT
For American Protestantism First World War marked the end of an era. Kenneth Scott Latourette observed that "Protestant Christianity had entered the nineteenth century on a rising tide" and noted that it had come to the end of the century "on a rapidly ascending curve." The blunting of the long Protestant advance was foreshadowed by the fate of the Interchurch World Movement of 1919 and 1920. The failure of the Interchurch World Movement can be attributed in part to the economic recession of 1920–1922. Protestantism was beginning to reap the consequences of a long period of acculturation. The postwar generation was suffering from a severe malady than mere weariness with crusades. The revolution in morals of the 1920s is frequently depicted in terms of "flaming youth" and the "jazz age," of "speakeasies" and "gang wars." Theological tensions, large-scale social change, the economic roller coaster, and demographic trends placed the churches under considerable pressure in the decades after First World War.
