Explaining the Twenties

In 1920, for the first time, the United States census revealed that more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. This fact speaks to a dramatic cultural shift that had taken place. The older ethnically homogenous white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, characterized by their traditional religion and farm life fell into decline. Overtaking its influence was a new, secular, urban mass culture rooted among diverse ethnic groups. It was a culture that provided more opportunity …

…Southern and Eastern European countries. As modernists questioned the beliefs of Fundamentalists, they ended up making a religion out of science. Modernists in the Twenties often acted as if science could provide all the answers to the questions of life, a role that religion had assumed in the past. If fundamentalist religion continues to remain a force in American culture and politics, perhaps it is because of the failure of science to answer these questions.