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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative
108.4  
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October, 2003
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Book Review

Canada and the United States



Jeanne Halgren Kilde. When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press. 2002. Pp. xiii, 310. $45.00.

This is an ambitious, often persuasive attempt to chart the "transformation of [Protestant] evangelical architecture and worship in nineteenth century America." To cope with this extremely complex subject, Jeanne Halgren Kilde makes several simplifying assumptions. One is that American evangelicalism can be fairly epitomized in the generally similar outlook and commitments of four "mainstream" denominations: Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist. Another is that differences in social class, ethnicity, or region did not result in markedly different versions of evangelical culture. Third, instead of parsing the words and celebrating the deeds of "princes of the pulpit," or those of an occasional prominent layman, Kilde sets out to "interrogate" the church structures each generation built as "religious texts" for the light they shed "on the religious and social features of evangelical religion" (p. 14). Not surprisingly, this book includes almost as many pictures and schematic drawings as it does names of evangelicals. . . .

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