Temples of Grace: The Material Transformation of Connecticut's Churches, 1790-1840 (review)

Very much like the neoclassical churches of the early republic that are the focus of her book, Gretchen Townsend Buggeln's Temples of Grace presents an elegant and satisfying aspect. This careful study of sacred architecture and artifacts also brings to light revealing evidence from newspapers, personal diaries and letters, dedication sermons, and church records to address significant questions about the relationship between religious belief and rapid economic growth in the early republic. In smooth, measured prose, Buggeln contends that Congregationalists in postrevolutionary New England guarded their Calvinist faith from the incursions of secular forces by co-opting competitive market practices and "learning to use the riches of the modern material world to their full spiritual advantage" (164). Built from the wealth generated by developing markets, the graceful churches that came to dominate Connecticut's landscape regenerated individual spiritual lives and "proclaimed an undeniably religious presence" in communities (168). Demonstrating their patrons' sensitive appreciation of material beauty, these stylish edifices also expressed and gave additional meaning to the early republic's culture of sensibility. Where many scholars have chastised Congregationalists' accommodations to fashion and sentimental excesses in the early republic, Temples of Grace offers a sympathetic portrait of religious peoples adapting to broad cultural currents and rapid economic change in order to safeguard their faith.

Fittingly for a study of buildings, Temples of Grace begins with a construction work site. "From start to finish the erection of a church was a widely shared event," Buggeln writes (5). Oversight committees made up of wealthy men, scores of master workmen and itinerant laborers, distant suppliers of materials, anxious members of congregations, and even Connecticut's General Assembly all had hands in the building of a church. In this rare glimpse into a nineteenth-century construction site, we also gain tangible knowledge of actual bricks and mortar. Buggeln's meticulous attention to detail about building materials and work schedules will not excite all of her readers, but the payoff here is in gaining a sense of the large scale of these projects. More than 300,000 bricks were delivered to the work site for Hartford's First Congregational Church, dedicated in 1807 (although construction went on for another year). Big projects like this required private outlays of money or long-term indebtedness unimaginable to previous generations of churchgoers. A fascinating early chapter in Temples of Grace therefore explores the various fund-raising schemes adopted by congregations in order to realize their church-building ambitions in the absence of state tax support. "Religious societies learned to think as competitive businesses," Buggeln writes, using state-chartered lotteries, subscriptions, and even something akin to bond issues to raise needed capital (41). Her discussion of the state-wide lotteries yields one especially delicious detail: that Phineas T. Barnum once earned a sizeable commission for selling lottery tickets intended to benefit Connecticut's cash-strapped churches. Buggeln also provides a lucid discussion of congregations' resort to pew rentals and auctions. Not without controversy, most religious societies came to view their buildings "as real estate to be parceled out, pew by pew, to investors" in an open, competitive bidding process (50). Although infrequent, Buggeln discovers in church records "frank assertions ... that the inability to claim a good pew was enough to send a Christian elsewhere" (55).

Resisting condemnation, Buggeln instead investigates what it was religious societies thought they were getting in return for giving such free play to competitive economic principles within their communities. The reward, temporal as well as spiritual, was beautiful churches built "in the modern stile" (1). In a deliberate shift away from colonial Puritans' "meetinghouse" style, the new "church" architecture demanded a rectangular building axis with a lowered pulpit on one end, an elaborate portico entrance at the other end, and a large steeple or tower integrated into the whole (88). Congregationalists preferred neoclassical motifs while Connecticut's Episcopalians chose Gothic detail; both groups...