Understanding Protestant Religious Identity in America

Some say Luther, though I'd say Schleiermacher, first opened the door for a northern European form of Christianity centered on the authority of the individual. In the United States, white Protestantism followed this egalitarian thread to the point where today's assumed cultural religion (a whitewashed version of Protestant Christianity) locates and verifies its truth in the life of the individual. Ironically, the student who chooses to identify as a religious “None” is by that declaration living out a religious identity shaped significantly by the Protestant Christian tradition. So much so that perhaps an avowed atheist or agnostic might be more helpfully understood as having a Christian religious identity, an identity shaped significantly by the white Protestant conviction that the individual is the ultimate arbiter of truth and empowered to opt out of adhering to religion altogether.