In the United States it appeared first in private schools and then in YMCA and in the preaching of evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody. Scholar Iren Annus linked the growth of Muscular Christianity in the United States to broader societal changes which were occurring throughout the country, including the emancipation of women and the influx of immigrants who worked blue-collar jobs while white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men became increasingly white-collar. These factors contributed to increasing anxiety over masculinity among white males in the United States. Parodied by Sinclair Lewis in "Elmer Gantry" (though he had praised Oberlin College YMCA for its "positive earnest muscular Christianity") and out of step with theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, its influence declined in American mainline Protestantism.