Righteous Streets: Puritan Town Planning as Religious Logistics

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Religion and the Environment

Abstract

Increasing attention to the experience of religious believers by sociologists has helped foster interest in how the organization and material development of space facilitates religious commitment. While fruitful, this research has struggled to link its interest in spatial arrangements to larger questions about religious change over time. Taking a historical approach, this paper investigates the town planning practices associated with the Congregational and Presbyterian establishment in Puritan New England. Following political sociologists who study the role of state institutions in the development of the built environment, the paper examines the Puritan approach to the landscape as a form of fostering religious legitimacy. Utilizing primary and secondary historical materials to describe the origins, development, and eventual propagation of these town planning schemes throughout New England’s first two centuries of growth, the paper urges that a coherent tradition of ‘religious logistics’ animated and shaped religious institution building in the American context. Where successful, this drive to develop space has left durable material structures that still shape religious activity today.

Author

• Samuel David Stabler, Yale