Once get the church going, and with a preacher of the Dogtown school, to preach out and out transcendentalism, and another ism or two, and they could get up an opposition that would be popular with the people.

In that way the thing would be sure to go.
Chapman declared this a golden opportunity.

He had felt for some time like getting up something that would drive the devil and all the Dutchmen out of Nyack and into the Tappan Zee, and establish an entire new order of things.
It was agreed between Chapman and his good wife that the church should be put on its legs without delay; that the work of reforming Nyack and the rest of the world should begin at once.

As funds were necessary to all great enterprises, and Chapman was inclined at all times to husband his own, the good woman got up a regular season of religious tea-parties, exclusively "for ladies." Mrs.Chapman was intent on popularizing the enterprise, and to that end had inserted on her cards of invitation, "exclusively for ladies." There was nothing like tea when you wanted to make a great reform movement popular.

Chapman had more than once said that woman, under the inspiration of tea, made a mighty engine in moving the world.