Conclusion

Abstract

In 1912, advocates for a Christian nation finally saw one of their great enemies, Sunday mails, curtailed. The victory, however, came about more as a result of union activism than evangelical campaigning. This was a revealing outcome. The dream of a Christian nation subsided not in an inexorable tide of secularization but because of a groundswell of support for the notion that religion and politics be kept at a distance. This was not a vision either that was fully achieved. But secularists were successful in offering a vigorous and popular defense of a strict separation of Church and State. Furthermore, many of their arguments would retain their appeal well into the twentieth century.