The thesis of this book is that a new relationship between preacher and congregation demanded a new architecture—an auditorium rather than a temple—and the rise of evangelical denominations in the mid-nineteenth century meant that the traditional basilica-style would give way to the new.
In the 1830s a popular revivalist minister named Charles Grandison Finney drew thousands to his meetings. A group of supporters renovated a New York City theatre to provide a better setting for the kind of performance he offered. They soon built a new church in the classical amphitheatre plan for him—the Broadway Tabernacle—the first church of its kind in the United States, according to Kilde. That plan was soon copied by hundreds of churches, mostly those with evangelical leanings, but eventually by almost every denomination (no Anglicans, Quakers or Catholics in the nineteenth century). By the end of the century, most large mainstream Protestant congregations had embraced the style. The newly rebuilt First Baptist Church in Morristown and the Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer (now United Presbyterian) in Paterson are fine examples. The exterior might be Gothic, Romanesque, or even Byzantine, but the interior was something new in religious architecture.
Most of the examples the author draws upon are large churches, generally from the midwest, but the case she makes is convincing. She doesn't appear to be aware, however, that the amphitheatre plan was adapted to even modestly-sized churches, of which we have many in this state. The only major criticism I have is that in her focus on Finney, there is apparently no recognition of the antecedents of the amphitheatre design in the early Reformed churches in the Netherlands and here in New Jersey. Evolutionists would call that convergence—an independently arrived at solution to a niche or opportunity. ( )