Looking again at religion in New Nation Virginia, “Wellspring of Liberty” explores the role of religious dissenters in the American Revolution and their subsequent efforts to secure religious liberty in the New Nation period. “Establishing Religious Freedom” in Virginia traces the evolution from dissenter toleration to religious freedom of conscience.
“Bodies of Belief” compares and contrasts the social history of Baptists in Virginia and Pennsylvania during the 1700s. “Virginians Reborn” invest ages the expansion of dissenter churches among Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. “The Richmond Theater Fire” documents the ecumenical revival that took place following a secular tragedy.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Era (1750-1824). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Wellspring of Liberty
John A. Ragosta wrote Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty in 2010. It is now available on Kindle and online new in hardcover.
Unlike North Carolina’s backcountry dissenters who turned to the Crown to protect their religious practice, Virginia’s Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians adopted Whig principles to support the Revolution and mobilized militarily. Virginia’s establishment accommodated by loosening religious restrictions and abolishing Anglican Church tithes.
In colonial times, Virginia was vigorous in protecting its established church and actively persecuted dissenters. But following the Revolution, through a sustained petition campaign and support of Jefferson and Madison, the dissenters gained the Statute for Religious Freedom, the template for the First Amendment.
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Establishing Religious Freedom
Thomas E. Buckley, SJ wrote Establishing Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Statute in Virginia in 2013. It is now available at the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
While dissenting Quakers, Presbyterians and Baptists tried to use Britain’s 1689 Toleration Act to establish niche churches in colonial Virginia, it was not until nearly one hundred years later that freedom of conscience was guaranteed by the Virginia General Assembly in 1786 in Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom passed by the floor leadership of James Madison some years after Jefferson’s governorship. The disposition of the confiscated parish glebes provided grounds for contention among churches, courts and legislatures for decades.
While evangelicals benefited from the dis-establishment of the Church of England and its successor the Episcopal Church, they did not adopt Jefferson’s rationalist, Unitarian beliefs. By the mid 1800s, the Protestant Christianity of the dissenters had assumed a functional establishment, with state support for approved faiths and endorsement of religion in general as essential to the public virtue required for a sustainable republic.
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*Buckley, Thomas E., SJ. Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 (1977). It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia” at Amazon.com.
Bodies of Belief
Janet Moore Lindman wrote Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America in 2008. It is now available at the University of Pennsylvania Press online new and used.
Lindman focuses on Virginia and Pennsylvania in her survey of changes among several Baptist churches over the course of a century. She emphasizes how conversion, ritual and religious discipline shaped each community, exploring the varied experience of white men, white women and enslaved persons.
In addition to church founding, growth, theological divisions and conflict over clergy, Lindman explains the movement of the Baptist faith from marginal to mainstream, within a social history of race and gender. Baptists embodied the evangelical paradox, they were both radically egalitarian and socially conservative. Physicality of religious practice was leveling, yet white male hierarchy was invoked, while Baptist men rejected gentry values to develop an alternative form of masculinity.
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Virginians Reborn
Jewel L. Spangler wrote Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century in 2008. It is now available from the University of Virginia Press and online new and used.
Researching Fauquier, Lunenburg and Southampton Counties, Spangler documents the Anglican establishment and several of its weakness in Virginia, especially the poor supply of ministers. Presbyterians established competing churches that introduced the colony to dissenting faith. Likewise, early Baptist churches were successful by providing religious services where the established Anglican church had limited reach.
Baptists both affirmed and challenged Virginia’s gentry patriarchy. Baptist men insisted on uncontested governance of their own households. But during the conversion ritual social hierarchies were suspended among the priesthood of all believers, and elite white men were required to submit to church discipline in their personal conduct. This is a story of the birth, development and eventual leadership of Virginia’s Baptists.
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Richmond Theater Fire
Meredith Henne Baker wrote The Richmond Theater Fire: Early America’s First Great Disaster in 2011. It is now available at the Louisiana State University Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
In the first disaster with large-scale civilian losses, seventy-two Virginians died in the Richmond Theater fire in December 1811. Attendees to see a popular touring company included the governor and other socially prominent Virginians, visitors from out of state and Europeans, as well as free and enslaved workers. The fire tragedy transformed Richmond, inspiring a spiritual awakening. Monumental Church was built on the theater’s foundations and other churches among several denominations were established.
Numerous survivors of the fire are noted in the book. Louis Hue Girardin, a veteran of the French Revolution lost his wife and closed his popular academy. Caroline Homassel, a local belle in society became a committed evangelical. Newspaper editor Thomas Ritchie insisted on scientific explanations for the tragedy. Governor George William Smith re-entered the burning building to help and lost his life. Gilbert Hunt, an enslaved blacksmith assisted other’s escape from the flames, later purchased his freedom, migrated to Liberia then returned to Richmond.
Learn more to buy “Richmond Theater Fire” at Amazon.com.
Note: Insights for these reviews are include those taken from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.