Conclusion

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter traces the decline of freethought in the United States after its nineteenth-century peak, showing how the deaths of key figures such as Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, along with internal divisions, leave the movement fragmented and intellectually stagnant. It explains how freethought’s public image changes in the early twentieth century, becoming increasingly tied to political radicalism and atheism, which fuels public suspicion and hostility, particularly during World War I and the Red Scare. The chapter examines how the legacy of Anthony Comstock continues through the persistence of obscenity and contraceptive laws, shaping debates and Supreme Court rulings on free expression, reproductive rights, and privacy well into the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It explores the resurgence of Christian nationalism, which evolves from nineteenth-century cultural assumptions into a twenty-first-century political movement that asserts Christian identity through restrictions on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, school curricula, and public religious symbols. Finally, the chapter underscores the continued relevance of the Comstock Act and Christian nationalist impulses, urging reflection on past conflicts over censorship, reproductive freedom, and religious identity to prevent repeating earlier mistakes.</jats:p>