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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Gretchen Townsend Buggeln. Temples of Grace: The Material Transformation of Connecticut's Churches, 1790–1840. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England. 2003. Pp. xiv, 312. $39.95.
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| Gretchen Townsend Buggeln's interdisciplinary study of how and why New Englanders constructed their many new houses of worship during the fifty years after the American Revolution brings together scholarship in religious history, material culture, art history, architecture, and cultural studies. With fifty-three illustrations—images of churches, cityscapes and village greens, architectural drawings, and other visual documentation—this is a well-written, gracefully produced book. Buggeln concentrates on Congregational and Episcopal construction, and most of her data is from New Haven, Hartford, and Litchfield County, but she does not entirely exclude Baptist, Methodist, and Universalist churches. Her focus on certain areas in Connecticut enables her to describe in detail the creation of a regional style with enduring cultural value. A brief epilogue traces the (misnamed) "colonial" New England church as an American icon into the twentieth century. |
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