Lanterna Rally

Author: Kyle T. Bulthuis

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 147981427X

In the fifty years after the Constitution wassigned in 1787, New York City grew from a port town of 30,000 to a metropolisof over half a million residents. This rapid development transformed a oncetightknit community and its religious experience. These effects were felt byTrinity Episcopal Church, which had presented itself as a uniting influence inNew York, that connected all believers in social unity in the late colonialera. As the city grew larger, more impersonal, and socially divided, churchesreformed around race and class-based neighborhoods. Trinity's original visionof uniting the community was no longer possible.In Four Steeples over the City Streets, Kyle T. Bulthuis examines thehistories of four famous church congregations in early Republic New YorkCity—Trinity Episcopal, John Street Methodist, Mother Zion African Methodist,and St. Philip's (African) Episcopal—to uncover the lived experience of thesehistorical subjects, and just how religious experience and social changeconnected in the dynamic setting of early Republic New York.Drawing on a range of primary sources, Four Steeples over the City Streetsrevealshow these city churches responded to these transformations from colonial timesto the mid-nineteenth century. Bulthuis also adds new dynamics to the storiesof well-known New Yorkers such as John Jay, James Harper, and Sojourner Truth.More importantly,Four Steeples over the City Streets connects issues ofrace, class, and gender, urban studies, and religious experience, revealing howthe city shaped these churches, and how their respective religious traditionsshaped the way they reacted to the city.