This chapter examines how ordinary men and women transposed the consumer mentality engendered in New York City's burgeoning marketplace to the religious sphere. New York's consumer revolution primed churchgoers to cross the threshold between cultural dependence and independence. Beginning in the 1740s and accelerating in subsequent decades, weekly newspapers featured advertisements intended to stimulate cravings for a variety of commercial products. As New Yorkers scanned pages filled with inventories of a widening array of commodities, their appetite for consumer goods increased. This chapter explores how the transformation of New Yorkers into religious consumers influenced the exercise of cultural authority in eighteenth-century New York City.
