Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : rethinking the secularization of American public life / Christian Smith -- Secularizing American higher education : the case of early American sociology / Christian Smith -- Educational elites and the movement to secularize public education : the case of the National Education Association / Kraig Beyerlein -- The positivist attack on Baconian science and religious knowledge in the 1870s / Eva Marie Garroutte -- 5. Power, ridicule, and the destruction of religious moral reform politics in the 1920s / P.C. Kemeny -- My own salvation : the Christian century and psychology's secularizing of American Protestantism / Keith G. Meador -- From Christian civilization to individual civil liberties : framing religion in the legal field, 1880-1949 / David Sikkink -- 8. Reforming education, transforming religion, 1876-1931 / George M. Thomas, Lisa R. Peck, and Channin G. De Haan -- Promoting a secular standard : secularization and modern journalism, 1870-1930 / Richard W. Flory -- After the fall : attempts to establish an explicitly theological voice in debates over science and medicine after 1960 / John H. Evans.