quote:

---

Another answer is beginning to emerge, a more positive answer and a more accurate answer. Christian Smith (Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina) describes in Secular Revolution how the mainline Protestant elite, up to the 1870s, controlled most of America's social institutions including corporations, universities, our courts, and the press. As mainline Protestants grew complacent, squabbling with Catholics and Mormons and Adventists and each other, a secular revolution formed in America's colleges and corporations. This revolution espoused "materialism, naturalism, positivism, and privatization or extinction of religion."

---