Fundamentalism and Femininity: Points of Encounter Between Religious Conservatives and Women, 1919–1935

Abstract

“Women go to church for the same reason that farmers and convicts go to church,” H.L. Mencken once observed—strictly for the company. His book “in defense of women,” written at the close of World War I, systematically deflated the Victorian era's sentimental notions about the “fairer sex.” “They are growing less and less religious as year chases year,” he noted cheerfully. “The evangelical Protestant denominations will have a hard time holding them.” Others shared Mencken's conclusion, though less joyfully. “Women no longer accept Christianity as a matter of course because they happen to be women,” the Christian Century lamented in 1924. “They pause and question here as in all things else.”