Review: Jon Butler's God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan
Reviewed by Kenneth T. Jackson
When we think of New York and history, religion is not typically the first thing that comes to mind. Organized crime perhaps, or skyscrapers, or labor disputes, or nightclubs, legitimate theaters, museums, subways, Wall Street, wealth, poverty, the list could be endless. To most people, Gotham is more associated with sin than with morality, more with prostitution than with sermons, more with sports venues than with churches.
God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan
By Jon Butler
Harvard University Press, 2020
320 pages
God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan may begin to change that perception. Jon Butler, former history department chair and former dean of the graduate school at Yale, is one of the most respected historians in the United States and a former president of the Organization of American Historians. This book is the result of his passion for the topic over many decades; and the result, as one might expect, is a synthesis and interpretation that goes far beyond simple mentions of distinguished theologians or famous churches. There are of course plenty of those.
What we learn in this elegantly written and persuasively argued volume is that the great city (limited in this case to Manhattan between 1880 and 1960) has long been a matchless center of religious thought and controversy. Just think of the personalities involved. Henry Ward Beecher, the pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, was the most famous preacher of the 19th century. Norman Vincent Peale, Dorothy Day, Adam Clayton Powell Sr, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Henry Sloan Coffin, and W.E.B. Du Bois are simply among the more prominent figures who populate Butler’s narrative. And think of the great religious edifices in Manhattan – St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue is the most famous church in the United States; the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine (which is so big that Notre Dame in Paris and St. Patrick’s in New York would both fit inside it) is the largest church in the western hemisphere; the independent Riverside Church, a benefaction of John D. Rockefeller, is probably the temple of liberalism in America; Trinity Church Wall Street is the richest church in the world; Temple Emanu El is the most influential and powerful synagogue on Earth; and John Street United Methodist Church is the mother church of Methodism in America. The list could go on. In fact, as Butler effectively and repeatedly demonstrates, New York “sacralized” the landscape so much so that Gotham has about four times as many churches proportionately as London. And faith penetrates deeply into daily life in the vast metropolis. Gotham is not a particularly secularized city. Seattle is America’s least religious place; New York is more toward the middle of the pack.
A major focus of God in Gotham is the relation of modernism to religion. For example, Butler sees technology more as a catalyst for spiritual development than a hindrance to church attendance. For example, I once thought that the reason Puritans could sit in pews for three hours while Cotton Mather rattled on about the Almighty was because there was not much else to do in 17th century New England. Not so fast, Butler argues. Radio, television, and the Internet also expand the reach of religious leaders. He concludes that rabbis adopted radio as quickly as stations took to the airwaves. They broadcast in Yiddish on WEVD, a socialist station named for labor organizer Eugene V. Debs. And Bishop Fulton J. Sheen became a national figure for his weekly programs on Life is Worth Living. After World War II, as New York solidified its role as the planet’s media capital, dozens of Protestant radio evangelists went on the air throughout the giant metropolitan region.
Late in the 19th century, especially after America’s best known intellectual, William Dean Howells, relocated to Manhattan from Boston, Gotham became the center of religion’s intellectual and publishing worlds. It was so with periodicals. At the turn of the century the Protestant Christian Herald was the most popular religious magazine in America; it moved to New York from Pittsburgh in 1909. So also, the Catholic World and Catholic News were published in Manhattan as was the Jewish American. Previously located in Philadelphia, the American Bible Society moved ninety miles north at about the same time. The Jehovah’s Witnesses Watchtower magazine moved from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn in 1909.
Because New York after 1900 housed more Jews than any other city anywhere, Gotham became the focus of Jewish publishing in America. In 1918 alone, there were fifty active Hebrew publications. Another hundred had lived and died between the 1880s and 1918. The socialist Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward), was more news than religious oriented, but it moved toward a more religious focus after Abraham Cahan became editor in 1903.
Fiction was a major aspect of Jewish writing at the turn of the century, and New York was at its apex. Sholem Aleichem was particularly prominent and widely read, but Yiddish fiction had numerous participants, including Sholem Abramovitch, I.L. Peretz, and Jacob Dinezon. The best-known product of the movement was Cahan’s The Rise of David Lewinsky. It had crossover appeal and is still in print.
The real question of this book is “So what?” Does it matter that Gotham was at the center of American religious expression? New York has never been a mirror image of the national experience. But you cannot put this book down without feeling that Sin City has gotten a bad rap from the media. The metropolis has long been characterized by deep religious feeling and expression. Millions of persons resident in the vast city regard faith as at the center of their lives. Their experiences in churches, synagogues, mosques, and even with religious television programming have been and remain a major force in their earthly journey. Historians need to follow Butler’s example and pay attention.
This is a major book on a major topic in American history. It will complicate our judgements about the nation’s biggest city.
Kenneth T. Jackson is the Jacques Barzun Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University.