...provide workers in the Gilded Age with the tools to oppose industrialization. In his words, Protestantism "justified labor organization and agitation, encouraged...conformist Christianity of most respectable clergymen." Herbert G. Gutman, "Protestantism and the American Labor Movement: The Christian Spirit in the Gilded...

...the working class.292 For example, his startling observation — that in Protestantism there "was a religious faith that justified labor organization...even the conformist Christianity of most respectable clergymen"293 — not only introduced a significant role for Protestant ideology in the make-up of...