The Power of Mammon: The Market, Secularization, and New York Baptists, 1790-1922

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"Curtis D. Johnson argues that the values and attractions of the market revolution triggered changes in congregational life that secularized New York State Baptist congregations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The market and associated forces, such as media, politics, individualism, and consumerism, affected Baptist belief and behavior so that, after a century of change, Baptist congregations were far weaker institutions than they had been earlier. The Baptist experience suggests that the seeds of religion's fading influence in contemporary America were actually sown two hundred years ago"--