The ideas here are interesting and suggestive but far from definitive and could be cut in different ways. History offers a lot of different ways to look at a series of events, so the fact that looking at things with this lens or that lens is suggestive of one narrative doesn't make it true.<p>But there's some guesswork to making sense of history, always, so that's not a knock to the author.<p>There are definite elements of truth here, there are cultural divides among whites that play a heavy role in partisan politics, the Social Gospel did have a heavy influence on the Progressive movement and some of that remains in Progressivism today.<p>However, I don't see "this is only a competition between sections of White America" as the best way to analyze politics and history. For instance, the author's argument about the post-WWII presidents belonging to the Southern+Ethnic faction of the Democratic party, if you expanded that to Southern+Ethnic+Black (ie, not Northern Protestant), then you can cover all of the Democratic presidents post-WWII including Barack Obama.<p>While he concludes his argument saying that the real fight is between sections of whites, nothing in his argument really excludes the possibility of the fight having minorities involved.<p>My view is that there are always many simultaneous conflicts going on, and while some conflicts may be prominent for a certain period, it doesn't mean the others are irrelevant.