In the years immediately preceding the turn of the twentieth century, the United States stood not merely on the threshold of a new chronological period. The nation was poised, more crucially, at the beginning of a radically different era for its social institutions, because trends initiated in this era would ultimately modify many of the structures of American life, shaping contours which persist to this day.

Social change in the latter part of the nineteenth century was as rapid as it was profound. During that time, America had moved increasingly from a native to an immigrant population, from rural to urban residence, and from agricultural to industrial production. As one consequence of this movement, American institutions, whose essential features were determined under more settled circumstances, faced for the first time the task of accommodating the most prominent product of change: greater cultural diversity. Organized religion in particular was severely tested by the urbanization, industrialization, and diversity of American society in this period.

This book provides an account of religion's response, on the structural level, to the new social conditions that arrived with the twentieth century. While not strictly an historical study, it utilizes sophisticated methods of analysis to test propositions which are central to historical writing on religion in the turn-of-the-century period. Because much of what has been published in the past on the history of religion in America is really a brand of intellectual history, this book augments and complements other religious histories with a quantitative assessment of changes taking place in urban populations and their institutions around 1900.