Enchanted New York

A tale of religion in Manhattan in the 19th and 20th centuries

- By Daniel Akst

For more than a century, the story of religion in the West has been one of disenchantment, as different sects struggled to cope with science, individualism, and a rising tide of secularism. The Yale historian Jon Butler tells that tale in microcosm in God in Gotham, an engaging history of religion in the Big Apple, especially Manhattan, in the roughly 80 years from the Gilded Age to the JFK presidency. It is a story not just of spirituality but of institutions, and it offers valuable lessons in how endangered entities, whether religious or not, can sustain themselves in the face of change.

To many of us, Manhattan is a foul-mouthed, sharp-elbowed temple to Mammon, but the author uses the harsh environment to advantage. In Butler’s hands, Gotham’s most influential borough is a petri dish brimming with religious organizations coping with change. The author’s chosen time period encompasses the onset of mass immigration, mass media, and mass affluence, to say nothing of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the atomic bomb.