Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, And The Rise Of The Baptists In The Late Eighteenth Century

Book Summary

For most of the colonial period, Virginia's spiritual landscapewas thoroughly dominated by the Church of England, which enjoyed a legal, andvirtually unchallenged, monopoly of faith. Evangelical Protestant dissentersdramatically remade Virginia's religious terrain, however, when they rapidlycoalesced into congregations in the decades just before the American Revolution, andthen overwhelmed a weakened Anglican Church in the war's aftermath. VirginiansReborn examines the intricate processes by which one of these groups, the Baptists, was able to take root, expand, and successfully compete for converts. By 1790, Virginia was the most Baptist state in America, as well as the point of origin of amassive early nineteenth-century western migration that helped spread the faithacross the country. Based primarily on churchrecords, ministers' writings, local records, imperial correspondence, and newspaperaccounts, this study looks at the geographical patterns of Baptist expansion, thetechniques dissenters used to gain adherents, the distinctiveness of Baptistworship, and its cultural resonances in Virginia. The book traces how the AmericanRevolution created a new context favorable to Baptists and how the rise of thisfaith echoed and reinforced the development of a distinctive, proslavery form ofrepublicanism. As Virginians embraced new political forms and sought to reconcilethem with slavery and household patriarchy, the book argues, they could findinstructive models in the particulars of Baptist fellowship. Ultimately, the book chronicles a dual process ofrebirth, as Virginians simultaneously formed a republic and became evangelicalChristians. Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorialprize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-centurystudies

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