Religion In North American Town Plans

The Influence of Religion in Pre-Industrial North American Town Planning
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 out to form new towns in hopes of turning people on to his religion.
The Law of Consecration and Stewardship was outlined by Joseph Smith in 1831, and marked the beginning of Mormon ?communitarianism.’ This law ??was a prescription for transforming the highly individualistic economic order of Jacksonian America into a system characterized by economic equality, socialization of surplus incomes, freedom of enterprise, and group economic self-sufficiency.? Basically, what this meant was that all members of the church and hereafter, the community, would deed all of his/her property to the bishop of the church. On top of this, the community was to farm and cultivate the land together and share equally the crops. In turn, the bishop would appropriate these assets out based on the need of an individual or family residing within the community. Doctrines of the church such as these held a paralleled relationship to the planning of the towns.
By early 1831, Joseph Smith and his following had moved west to Kirtland, Ohio. Kirtland was an ideal spot for Americans seeking prosperity given its ripe location for trade as well as agriculture. The land in Ohio had richer soil than that found along the Atlantic coast, and the climate was much milder. A good reason for this can be attributed to Ohio’s gentle topography. This was beneficial to the Mormon people who relied on farming and trade. The location was in close proximity to both Lake Erie, which provided the transportation to the East, and the Ohio Canal, which connected to the Ohio River and hence the entire Mississippi River system. The Mormons however did not take full advantage of this beneficial location for settlement, as they left after only a short period of time.
Kirtland was a settlement