At the fin de siècle the Industrial Revolution created egregious physical, emotional and spiritual conditions for American society and especially for the worker but who would come forward to alleviate those conditions? Protestants implemented their Social Gospel Movement as a proposed cure to these problems. Secular Progressives engaged in a more…

As a major social force throughout the nineteenth century, religion proved an important factor in the settlement of the American West. Yet the idea of a religious figure as a western hero has never emerged in the popular culture adaptations of the Western, since the clergy are usually portrayed as gentle, "soft," or even somewhat…