This is a book about Methodists in Indiana between 1880 and 1930, searching for the larger transformation of American culture, particularly the development of a new nexus of institutions that would become known as the social mainstream. Corn shows how forces of upward social mobility, evangelistic religion, and optimism for progress converged in these Midwestern Methodists with darker forces such as racism, nativism, and a grim commitment to the use of legal coercion. The result was that Methodism stopped being a religious movement aimed at the mass of Americans and ended up becoming one moulded to the sensibilities of America's new managerial middle class. It is in this transformation that contemporary Methodism has its deepest roots.