The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth CenturyWinner of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Best First Book Prize of the American Society of Church History Society for U. S. Intellectual History Notable Title in American Intellectual History The story of liberal religion in the twentieth century, Matthew S. Hedstrom contends, is a story of cultural ascendency. This may come as a surprise most scholarship in American religious history, after all, equates the numerical decline of the Protestant