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

Following the American Revolution, the majority of Connecticut's religious societies tore down their boxy eighteenth-century meetinghouses and replaced them with something totally different: spired churches with an elaborate entrance portico on one of the shorter facades. These new buildings signaled a change in how these Christians conceptualized worship space, and in their fundamental understanding of the relationship between the spiritual and material aspects of their lives.
Because these new churches evoked a much-beloved myth of tightly-bound communities sharing democratic values and faith in God, they have often been romanticized as emblems of a bygone era of pastoral serenity. Yet, New England of the early nineteenth century - and its religious life in particular - was anything but tranquil. Revivalism, evangelicalism, and religious pluralism meshed with social, economic, and political dislocation to create a volatile period in which Christianity's place was uncertain.

Gretchen Buggeln is Assistant Professor, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and Director of the Winterthur Research Fellowship Program.

GRETCHEN BUGGELN is Assistant Professor, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and Director of the Winterthur Research Fellowship Program. She has written numerous articles on the nineteenth-century religious landscape of Connecticut.