S. Brent Plate Religious groups took various routes out of the area, often seeking ever greener pastures to the west. Many groups that began along the canal, like the Mormons, Spiritualists, and Adventists, spread to remote corners of the globe.
Watering the Roots of Mormonism: The Erie Canal’s Contribution to the Faith
Peace, Love, and World Religions?
Brian Pennington In 1893, Presbyterian minister John Henry Barrows opened the inaugural World’s Parliament of Religion in Chicago by inviting the first-ever assembly of religious leaders from across the globe to join him in a “act of common worship” and to sing Isaac Watt’s Trinitarian re-write of the 100th Psalm. This less-than-catholic invocation, which concludes with the call to “Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” was followed by a similar gesture when Cardinal James Gibbons recited the Lord’s Prayer, which Barrow declared the “universal prayer” that would open each of the Parliament’s seventeen days.