ABSTRACT
In the mid-nineteenth century, it could be said that "evangelical Christians ran the show in the United States". The maintenance of the Protestant cultural dominance demanded a broad popular base-one that was Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. And all of this was changing after the Civil War, which can be viewed as a watershed between the old and new America. Another difference between the old and new America was a dramatic change in the intellectual climate. The greatest challenge to traditional Christianity and the chief symbol of the new intellectual revolution was the new biology, as set forth by Charles Darwin. Religious groups in late nineteenth-century America faced an onslaught of challenges—cultural diversity, migrations, new religions, industrialization, urbanization, and the new intellectual currents. The market economy and the industrial revolution began in America well before the Civil War. After the Civil War, Protestantism and capitalism continued to complement each other. Moody epitomized the business climate of the Gilded Age.
