The Unmaking (and Remaking) of Protestant New York | Elite and Evangelical Churches in the Early Republic & Antebellum City

Evangelicalism is not often associated with cities, much less New York. But it was a powerful force shaping Gotham in the early 1800s, as New York went from relative colonial backwater to emerging global behemoth. The dominant congregations of the British era also powerfully encountered ​in New York City, a leading site of modernization, the forces challenging and transforming Protestantism in the wider U.S. after independence and before the Civil War — not just disestablishment and revivalism, but the growing market economy, slavery and immigration. ​

​Join us for a conversation with Kyle Roberts, author of Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860, and Kyle T. Bulthuis, author of Four Steeples over the City Streets: Religion and Society in New York’s Early Republic Congregations,
​about how these churches responded to these immense social, economic and political changes, and how they in turn reconfigured life in Gotham.

Co-sponsored by The Museum of the City of New York