Since World War II, American mainstream churches have moved from presuming Protestant cultural dominance to a tripartite recognition of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to a multicultural reality in which identifying mainstream churches is difficult.

Background

Historically, a group of Protestant denominations with roots deep in the American experience were known as the mainstream churches. They included Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and the Disciples or Churches of Christ and Reformed Churches. Most American presidents had belonged to one of these groups and their public consensus underlay public education. The trauma of the Depression and World War II, however, led to three developments in the mid-twentieth century.

First, paralleling the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, the ecumenical movement saw the founding of a World Council of Churches in 1948 and the reorganization of the Federal Council of Churches as the National Council of Churches in 1950. These...