Evangelical Gotham

Book excerpt: Kyle Roberts explores the role of evangelical religion in the making of antebellum New York City and its spiritual marketplace. Between the American Revolution and the War of 1812a period of rebuilding after seven years of British occupationevangelicals emphasized individual conversion and rapidly expanded the number of their congregations. Then, up to the Panic of 1837, evangelicals shifted their focus from their own salvation to that of their neighbors, through the use of domestic missions, Seamen s Bethels, tract publishing, free churches, and abolitionism. Finally, in the decades before the Civil War, the city s dramatic expansion overwhelmed evangelicals, whose target audiences shifted, building priorities changed, and approaches to neighborhood and ethnicity evolved. By that time, though, evangelicals and the city had already shaped each other in profound ways, with New York becoming a national center of evangelicalism."