Arnold Kling is reading The New Holy Wars, by Robert H. Nelson, which interprets various economic and environmental ideologies in religious terms:
In the broadest view, one might say that, intellectually and theologically speaking, much of American history has reflected a struggle between the pessimistic Puritan view of fallen, sinful man and the optimistic Enlightenment view of rational, utilitarian man.
One commenter wonders why this is a particularly Puritan view, and I agree:
To view man as sinful and fallen is not specifically Puritan, but one can make the case that our academic clerisy descends from a Harvard-trained Puritan clergy.But that misses the point that Harvard was taken over by Unitarians in the early 1800s, leading it to become somewhat secular and extremely progressive. After a couple hundred years of secularization and progress, what have you got? The modern academy.