Religion In North American Towns
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Religion In North American Towns
Religion has played a vital role in the settling of many pre-industrial North
American towns and cities. In fact, religion proved to be one of the main
reasons Europeans broke their affiliation with the dictatorial and the
monarchial rule in Europe and came to settle the Americas. Generally, these
particular religious settlers incorporated town-planning ideas developed in
Europe and translated them into their particular beliefs. However, some specific
and influential settlers broke away from the norm in a progressive attempt to
invent new societies in a new land based on accumulated knowledge. John Reps,
the pre-eminent American historian on town planning has this to say about those
who strayed from the common ideals. “Almost from the beginning of settlement,
America attracted a variety of reformers, utopians, and pariah religious sects.
These dedicated… groups shunned existing cities with their temptations and
distractions, preferring to create settlements in harmony with their religious,
economic, or social convictions.” In this paper, I will analyze and compare
the influence of two different religions in the settling of their respective
towns. The first will be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also
known as the Mormons, and the second is the Church of the United Brethren, also
known as the Moravians. ¨ THE MORMON MISSION The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints is a Christian religion that came into existence during the
early 19th-century American movement of religious revivalism called the Second
Great Awakening. Officially, Joseph Smith, who is recognized as a prophet in
modern Mormon teachings, founded the church in 1830 after he said that God had
spoken to him. In that same year, he organized his first followers in New York.
From that point on, as they marched westward, he experimented in building towns
that revolved around “…order, unity, and community.” These values were
viewed as supreme in the prophet’s ideal society, and these same values were
at odds with values that were characteristic of many cities and towns already
existing in America at that time. It is said that his aim was to realize the
Christian commonwealth that had been the ideal of John Winthrop in Puritan New
England. According to one account, Winthrop at one time had said to the
colonists, “Wee must be knit together in this work as one man.” This one
statement seems to provide the basis of Smith’s convictions when he set ou...
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