Professor of Religious Studies S.B. Rodriguez-Plate discussed the Erie Canal’s influence on American religion in a recent episode of “Religion in the American Experience,” a PodBean podcast.
In “The Erie Canal and American Religion,” Rodriguez-Plate examined the canal’s role in both “creating and facilitating new religious movements,” and cultivating “extraordinary experimental spiritual groups,” including the Mormons and Adventists, and “extraordinary experimental utopian communal societies,” such as the Oneida Community.
Posted February 6, 2026
