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  • Four Steeples Over The City Streets: Religion and Society in New York’s Early Republic Congregations by Kyle T. Bulthuis
  • Mark Granquist
Four Steeples Over The City Streets: Religion and Society in New York’s Early Republic Congregations. By Kyle T. Bulthuis. New York: New York University Press, 2014. x + 270 pp.

History is often written on a large scale, with sweeping vistas and dynamic social forces impelling the story over centuries and continents. And though there is a place for such history on the large scale, these narratives are generally built off of dozens (if not hundreds) of smaller studies, each of which contributes to a vast mosaic that [End Page 118] makes a larger history possible. Sometimes these focused historical studies are actually more fascinating than the larger ones, as they peer into the daily routines of ordinary women and men, especially their religious lives. This book is one such focused study. It examines four congregations in early nineteenth-century New York City. This study gives us a fascinating glimpse into how Americans in this period organized their congregations and their religious lives in the midst of a rapidly growing and changing slice of urban America.

This is a period of tremendous growth and development in the United States. Recently having gained its independence from Great Britain, the new American nation had to develop its own new democratic institutions, and to live into them. The control of congregations went through its own democratic revolution, as well, with older forms of clerical authority being challenged by new ideals of democratic, lay participation in the operation of the congregation. This study involves four congregations, two Episcopal and two Methodist; one of each two congregations is African-American, with all the attendant difficulties of race in pre-Civil War America. Another source of tension came out of the strained relations between the Methodists and Episcopalians at the time (Methodism began within the Church of England parishes, but was eventually forced out).

The white Episcopal congregation (Trinity, Wall Street) attempted initially to maintain its traditional patriarchal control over New York’s religious life, paralleling the influence that its wealthy parishioners had over many other areas of New York life; Bultuis refers to this as an “organic” vision of early national New York society. But this aspect of control could not be maintained, as other congregations (especially the three others) entered into the religious life of New York, and challenged the control that Trinity considered it rightful patrimony. And the city just grew too big for its religious life to be controlled in such a fashion; even the African American congregations pushed for their own place and own autonomy within the limited sphere allotted to them.

This is a fascinating study, and one worth reading for a glimpse into the evolving religious world of the United States in the decades leading up to the Civil War. [End Page 119]

Mark Granquist
Luther Seminary
Saint Paul, Minnesota
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