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