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We’re about to start getting into the development of Dispensationalism. Fitzgerald builds to that by talking about the split between the liberals and conservatives that had become extremely fractious over the slavery issue. After the Civil War however, this religious movement didn’t unify because the issue had been “settled”, but continued developing into its own independent currents.

On the conservatives, she talks about the development of fundamentalism and this passage stood out, namely that all of these Protestant religious movements were very textual, philosophical, and educated and didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. Fundamentalism was responding to many of the currents that were developing as a result of massive changes in America, the British religious movements, and the higher criticism of the Bible. This is difficult to see now because we still have the residual superstructure that was formed while the intellectual currents that created it, and what they were responding to, has been forgotten.