But America began moving away from older beliefs in human sinfulness and in spiritual blindness and helplessness apart from the assistance of God. Andrew Delbanco wrote The Death of Satan, in which he traces how, during the early nineteenth century, American culture began losing its grip on the Christian doctrines of the evil of human nature and the reality of Satan. “Pride of self,” he wrote, “once the mark of the devil, was now not just a legitimate emotion but America’s uncontested god. . . . Liberal individualism assumed its modern form in these years.”
