ABSTRACT
In A History of the American People, Paul Johnson suggests the Erie Canal is “the outstanding example of a human artifact creating wealth rapidly in the whole of history.” This chapter suggests the Erie Canal is the outstanding example of a human artifact creating new religious movements rapidly in the whole of history. Within 25 years of its opening, the Erie Canal cultivated extraordinary experimental spiritual groups including the Mormons, the Adventists, Spiritualism, a revived Apocalypticism, utopian communal societies such as the Oneida Community, with the Amana Colony and Shakers passing through, as well as the emotion-laden revivals of the Second Great Awakening. The Canal also engendered the religiously infused social movements of abolition, women’s suffrage, and temperance. And because of its key location and function as the link between east and west, the repercussions of canal-formed spiritual experiments rippled across the continent with westward expansion, creating unique currents of religion in the United States into the present day. This chapter argues that the geographical and technological reality of the Erie Canal has influenced religiosity across the continent, and across the globe.
