New Outlooks.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century industrialization and urbanization profoundly affected the manner in which Americans viewed their society. Great cities arose and industrialization proceeded so quickly that within two generations the United States emerged as the world's supreme economic power. Massive waves of European immigrants arrived to find jobs in factories, mines, farms, and transportation networks. Meanwhile bold new ideas circulated faster and farther than ever before, and, as the prestige of the natural sciences rose, evolutionary themes reshaped the ways in which educated men and women thought about the world and the future. Optimism and even confidence about humanity's new capacity to solve ancient and intractable problems began to take hold in many quarters. American religious life shared fully in this sense of growth and rapid change. Protestantism continued to hold a central, although unofficial, place in the nation's life. Formal membership...