Religion in early Virginia

History of Virginia
By year Colony of Virginia American Revolution U.S. Civil War Post–Civil War Topics: African-Americans  • Cities  • Politics  • Slavery
Virginiaportal
v t e

The history of religion in early Virginia begins with the founding of the Virginia Colony, in particular the commencing of Anglican services at Jamestown in 1607. In 1619, the Church of England was made the established church throughout the Colony of Virginia, becoming a dominant religious, cultural, and political force. Throughout the 18th century its power was increasingly challenged by Protestant dissenters and religious movements. Following the American Revolution and political independence from Britain, in 1786 the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom disestablished the Church of England, ending public support and fully legalizing the public and private practice of other religious traditions.

Contents

• Background
• Arrival of Anglicanism
• Early missionaries
• Established church
• Anglican parishes
• Alternatives to the established church
• Presbyterians
• Baptists
• Methodists
• Religious freedom and disestablishment
• See also
• References
• Further reading
• Primary sources

Background

After the start of the Columbian Exchange in 1492, subsequent waves of European colonization of the Americas coincided with the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation. With the English Reformation beginning in the 1530s, England broke from the Roman Catholic Church to form the Church of England as its official religion (a status that was at dispute until the end of the 17th century). In turn, within England numerous groups of Protestants (collectively, the English Dissenters) broke from the Church of England for theological and liturgical reasons. The increasing hostility and disputes (often bloody) in Europe between and among Catholics and various groups of Protestants would influence and spill into the European colonization efforts, and in turn affect the internal relations among the colonists through the 17th and 18th centuries.

In 1570, a group of Spanish Jesuit missionaries founded the Ajacán Mission in what would become the Tidewater region of Virginia (its exact location uncertain). All but one of the missionaries were killed in 1571 by the indigenous populace. Subsequently, no Catholic churches would be founded in the future territory of Virginia until after the American Revolution. Despite this, archaeological discoveries of Catholic artifacts at the Jamestown site have led to speculation that at least a few of the early Jamestown settlers may have been crypto-Catholic. ^[1]

Arrival of Anglicanism

Anglicanism arrived in the Americas (and specifically what was then considered "Virginia") with the ill-fated Roanoke Colony (located in present-day North Carolina). Its brief existence saw recorded the first baptisms in North America into the Church of England.

Anglican chaplain Robert Hunt was among the first group of English colonists arriving in Virginia in 1607 (and among those dead by 1608). He was succeeded as chaplain by Richard Buck, who served in the post until his death in 1624. By the time the Virginia Company of London was dissolved in 1624, authorities in England had sent 22 Anglican clergymen to the colony.

Early missionaries

Religious leaders in England felt they had a duty as missionaries to bring Christianity (or more specifically, the religious practices and beliefs of the Church of England, in contrast to the Latin incursion of Central and South America), to the Native Americans.

There was an assumption that their own "mistaken" spiritual beliefs were largely the result of a lack of education and literacy since the Powhatan did not have a need for a written language. Therefore, teaching them these skills would logically result in what the English saw as "enlightenment" in their religious practices, and bring them into the fold of the church, which was part of the government, and hence, a form of control. One of the earliest of these missionaries was Reverend Alexander Whitaker, who served from 1611 until his death in 1616. Efforts in the early 17th century to establish a school for the Virginia Indians at Henricus were abandoned following the Indian Massacre of 1622, and would not come about for another century.

Apart from the Nansemond tribe, which had converted in 1638, and a few isolated individuals over the years, the other Powhatan tribes as a whole did not fully convert to Christianity until 1791. ^[2]

Established church

The Church of England was legally established in the colony in 1619. In practice, establishment meant that local taxes were funneled through the local parish to handle the needs of local government, such as roads and poor relief, in addition to the salary of the minister.

Alternatives to the established church

Colonists were typically inattentive, uninterested, and bored during Anglican church services, according to the ministers, who complained that the people were sleeping, whispering, ogling the fashionably dressed women, walking about and coming and going, or at best looking out the windows or staring blankly into space. ^[5] The lack of towns means the church had to serve scattered settlements, while the acute shortage of trained ministers meant that piety was hard to practice outside the home. Some ministers solved this problem by encouraging parishioners to become devout at home, using the Book of Common Prayer for private prayer and devotion. This allowed devout Anglicans to lead an active and sincere religious life apart from the unpopular formal church services. However the stress on private devotion weakened the need for a bishop or a large institutional church of the sort Blair wanted. The stress on personal piety opened the way for the First Great Awakening, which pulled people away from the established church. ^[6]

In 1689, the Parliamentary Act of Toleration had allowed freedom of worship for certain Nonconformist Protestant groups in England, with conditions and legal constraints. Similar tolerance was put in place in Virginia. Baptists, German Lutherans and Presbyterians, funded their own ministers, and favored disestablishment of the Anglican church. However, by the mid-18th century, Baptists and Presbyterians faced growing persecution; between 1768 and 1774, about half of the Baptist ministers in Virginia were jailed for preaching.

Especially in the back country, most families had no religious affiliation whatsoever and their low moral standards were shocking to proper Englishmen. ^[7] The Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and other evangelicals directly challenged these lax moral standards and refused to tolerate them in their ranks. The evangelicals identified as sinful the traditional standards of masculinity which revolved around gambling, drinking, and brawling, and arbitrary control over women, children, and slaves. The religious communities enforced new standards, creating a new male leadership role that followed Christian principles and became dominant in the 19th century. ^[8]

Presbyterians

The Presbyterians were evangelical dissenters, mostly Scotch-Irish Americans who expanded in Virginia between 1740 and 1758, immediately before the Baptists. The Church of Scotland had first adopted presbyterian ideas in the 1560s, which brought it into continuing conflict with the Church of England following the Union of Crowns.

Where Presbyterians dominated the parish and county, they could exercise power through the established church's vestry, whose composition reflected their leadership and influence. For example, Presbyterians filled at least nine of the twelve positions on the first vestry of Augusta parish in Staunton, Virginia, founded in 1746. ^[9]

The First Great Awakening impacted the area in the 1740s, leading Samuel Davies to be sent from Pennsylvania in 1747 to lead and minister to religious dissenters in Hanover County, Virginia. He eventually helped found the first presbytery in Virginia (the Presbytery of Hanover ^[10] ), evangelized slaves (remarkable in its time, ^[11] ), and influenced young Patrick Henry who traveled with his mother to listen to sermons. ^[12]

Spangler (2008) argues that Presbyterians were more energetic and held frequent services better attuned to the frontier conditions of the colony. Presbyterianism grew in frontier areas where the Anglicans had made little impress, especially the western areas of the Piedmont and the valley of Virginia. Uneducated whites and blacks were attracted to the emotional worship of the denomination, its emphasis on biblical simplicity, and its psalm singing. Presbyterians were a cross-section of society; they were involved in slaveholding and in patriarchal ways of household management, while the Presbyterian Church government featured few democratic elements. ^[13] Some local Presbyterian churches, such as Briery in Prince Edward County owned slaves. The Briery church purchased five slaves in 1766 and raised money for church expenses by hiring them out to local planters. ^[14]

Religious freedom and disestablishment

At the start of the American Revolution, the Anglican Patriots realized that they needed dissenter support for effective wartime mobilization, so they met most of the dissenters' demands in return for their support of the war effort. ^[24] During the war, 24 (19%) of the 124 Anglican ministers were active Loyalists. They generally went into exile, and Britain paid some of their financial losses. ^[25]

After the American victory in the war, the Anglican establishment sought to reintroduce state support for religion. This effort failed when non-Anglicans gave their support to Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom", which eventually became law in 1786. With freedom of religion the new watchword, the Church of England was dis-established in Virginia. When possible, worship continued in the usual fashion, but the local vestry no longer distributed tax money or had local government functions such as poor relief. The Right Reverend James Madison (1749–1812), a cousin of Patriot James Madison, was appointed in 1790 as the first Episcopal Bishop of Virginia and he slowly rebuilt the denomination within freedom of choice of belief and worship. ^[26]

At the same time, the statute opened the way for new religious traditions. The first Jewish synagogue in Virginia was founded in 1789, Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome. Construction on the Church of Saint Mary in Alexandria was begun in 1795, becoming the first Catholic church in Virginia since the failed Jesuit Mission in the 16th century.

The principle of disestablishment would subsequently be included in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in December 1791.

Virginia's Glebe Act of 1802 resulted in the sale or turnover of vacant Episcopal/Anglican parish land, often to other more active church congregations/denominations.

See also

• History of religion in the United States
• History of Christianity in the United States
• History of Protestantism in the United States
• Pohick Church, parish church of George Washington

Related Research Articles

The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations.

Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the state church in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England.

Religion in the United States began with the religions and spiritual practices of Native Americans. Later, religion also played a role in the founding of some colonies, as many colonists, such as the Puritans, came to escape religious persecution. Historians debate how much influence religion, specifically Christianity and more specifically Protestantism, had on the American Revolution. Many of the Founding Fathers were active in a local Protestant church; some of them had deist sentiments, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Some researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles," specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage. Others stress the secular character of the American Revolution and note the secular character of the nation's founding documents.

In Anglican Christianity, the term low church refers to those who give little emphasis to ritual, often having an emphasis on preaching, individual salvation and personal conversion. The term is most often used in a liturgical sense, denoting a Protestant emphasis, whereas "high church" denotes an emphasis on ritual, often Anglo-Catholic.

The First Great Awakening, sometimes Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival, was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Protestantism as adherents strove to renew individual piety and religious devotion. The Great Awakening marked the emergence of Anglo-American evangelicalism as a trans-denominational movement within the Protestant churches. In the United States, the term Great Awakening is most often used, while in the United Kingdom, the movement is referred to as the Evangelical Revival.

St. John's Church is an Episcopal church located at 2401 East Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia, United States. Formed from several earlier parishes, St. John's is the oldest church in the city of Richmond, Virginia. It was built in 1741 by William Randolph's son, Colonel Richard Randolph; the Church Hill district was named for it. It was the site of two important conventions in the period leading to the American Revolutionary War, and is famous as the location where American Founding Father Patrick Henry gave his memorable speech at the Second Virginia Convention, closing with the often-quoted demand, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" The church is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Robert Carter III was an American planter and politician from the Northern Neck of Virginia. During the colonial period, he sat on the Virginia Governor's Council for roughly two decades. After the American Revolutionary War saw the Thirteen Colonies gain independence from the British Empire as the United States, Carter, influenced by his belief in Baptism, began the largest manumission in the history of the United States prior to the American Civil War.

The colonial period of South Carolina saw the exploration and colonization of the region by European colonists during the early modern period, eventually resulting in the establishment of the Province of Carolina by English settlers in 1663, which was then divided to create the Province of South Carolina in 1710. European settlement in the region of modern-day South Carolina began on a large scale after 1651, when frontiersmen from the English colony of Virginia began to settle in the northern half of the region, while the southern half saw the immigration of plantation owners from Barbados, who established slave plantations which cultivated cash crops such as tobacco, cotton, rice and indigo.

The Diocese of Virginia is the second largest diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, encompassing 38 counties in the northern and central parts of the state of Virginia. The diocese was organized in 1785 and is one of the Episcopal Church's nine original dioceses, with origins in colonial Virginia. As of 2024, the diocese has 16 regions with more than 68,000 members and 173 congregations.

Approximately 15.3% of Americans identify as Baptist, making Baptists the second-largest religious group in the United States, after Roman Catholics. Baptists adhere to a congregationalist structure, so local church congregations are generally self-regulating and autonomous, meaning that their broadly Christian religious beliefs can and do vary. Baptists make up a significant portion of evangelicals in the United States and approximately one third of all Protestants in the United States. Divisions among Baptists have resulted in numerous Baptist bodies, some with long histories and others more recently organized. There are also many Baptists operating independently or practicing their faith in entirely independent congregations.

In the United States, the history of the Episcopal Church has its origins in the Church of England, a church which stresses its continuity with the ancient Western church and claims to maintain apostolic succession. Its close links to the Crown led to its reorganization on an independent basis in the 1780s. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was characterized sociologically by a disproportionately large number of high status Americans as well as English immigrants; for example, more than a quarter of all presidents of the United States have been Episcopalians. Although it was not among the leading participants of the abolitionist movement in the early 19th century, by the early 20th century its social engagement had increased to the point that it was an important participant in the Social Gospel movement, though it never provided much support for the Prohibitionist movement. Like other mainline churches in the United States, its membership decreased from the 1960s. This was also a period in which the church took a more open attitude on the role of women and toward homosexuality, while engaging in liturgical revision parallel to that of the Roman Catholic Church in the post Vatican II era.

Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population about 63% is Christian. The majority of Christian Americans are Protestant Christians, though there are also significant numbers of American Roman Catholics and other Christian denominations such as Latter Day Saints, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 210 million Christians and, as of 2021, over 140 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as Christian during this seven-year interval. In a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians. They were 75% in 2015, 70.6% in 2014, 78% in 2012, 81.6% in 2001, and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation.

Christianity was introduced to North America as it was colonized by Europeans beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish, French, and British brought Roman Catholicism to the colonies of New Spain, New France and Maryland respectively, while Northern European peoples introduced Protestantism to Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Netherland, Virginia colony, Carolina Colony, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Lower Canada. Among Protestants, adherents to Anglicanism, Methodism, the Baptist Church, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Mennonite and the Moravian Church were the first to settle in the US, spreading their faith in the new country.

Christianity was introduced with the first European settlers beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. Colonists from Northern Europe introduced Protestantism in its Anglican and Reformed forms to Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Netherland, Virginia Colony, and Carolina Colony. The first arrivals were adherents to Anglicanism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, the Baptist Church, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Anabaptism and the Moravian Church from British, German, Dutch, and Nordic stock. America began as a significant Protestant majority nation. Significant minorities of Roman Catholics and Jews did not arise until the period between 1880 and 1910.

Charles Woodmason was an author, poet, Anglican clergyman, American loyalist, and west gallery psalmodist. He is best remembered for his journal documenting life on the South Carolina frontier in the late 1760s, and for his role as a leader of the South Carolina Regulator movement.

Truro Parish was the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Anglican church in colonial Virginia with jurisdiction originally over all of Fairfax County. The parish had its central church at the Truro Church and the parish was named for the parish in Truro in Cornwall. The parish was created on November 1, 1732 from Hamilton Parish. It was divided twice: in 1748, Cameron Parish was formed and in 1764 Fairfax Parish was created. After 1765, Truro Parish covered southern Fairfax County until disestablishment ended the parish system by 1786.

Cameron Parish was the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Anglican church in colonial Virginia with jurisdiction over the western part of Fairfax County and, once it was created in 1757, over Loudoun County. The parish was named for the minor title of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron. The parish was created in 1748 from Truro Parish. It was divided in 1770 and Shelburne Parish was formed from the western half of Loudoun County. After 1770, Cameron Parish covered eastern Loudoun County until disestablishment ended the parish system by 1786.

The history of Christianity in Britain covers the religious organisations, policies, theology and popular religiosity since ancient history.

Christ Church, or Christ Episcopal Church, is an Anglican church in Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia. The church was founded in 1738, with its first vestry elected in 1742. It is the seat of Frederick Parish, Diocese of Virginia, which once covered half of the Shenandoah valley and western Virginia, including what became West Virginia. The current church building, the parish's third, was designed by Robert Mills - it was completed in 1828, and is the oldest church building continuously used for religious purposes in the county. It is a contributing building in the local Historic District which predates the National Register of Historic Places, and which has been expanded three times since 1980.

The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina was established in 1785 as one of the nine original dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States. The diocese originally covered the entire state of South Carolina, but the western part of the state became the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina in 1922. In 2012, a controversy led to the existence of two rival dioceses, the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina and the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, each claiming to be the legitimate successor of the original diocese.

References

Further reading

• Beeman, Richard R. "Social Change and Cultural Conflict in Virginia: Lunenburg County, 1746 To 1774," William and Mary Quarterly (1978) 35#3 pp 455–476 in JSTOR
• Billings, Warren M., John E. Selby, and Thad W, Tate. Colonial Virginia: A History (1986)
• Blosser, Jacob M. "Irreverent Empire: Anglican Inattention in an Atlantic World," Church History (2008) 77#3 pp. 596–628
• Bond, Edward L. and Joan R. Gundersen. The Episcopal Church in Virginia, 1607–2007 (2007)
• Bond, Edward L. "Anglican theology and devotion in James Blair's Virginia, 1685–1743," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1996) 104#3 pp. 313–40
• Bond, Edward L. Damned Souls in the Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (2000),
• Bruce, Philip Alexander. Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Religious, Moral, Educational, Legal, Military, and Political Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records (1910) online edition
• Buckley, Thomas E. Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 (1977)
• Gewehr, Wesley Marsh. The Great Awakening in Virginia, 1740-1790 (1965)
• Gundersen, Joan R. The Anglican Ministry in Virginia, 1723-1766: A Study of a Social Class (Garland, 1989)
• Gundersen, Joan Rezner. "The double bonds of race and sex: black and white women in a colonial Virginia parish." Journal of Southern History (1986): 351-372. in JSTOR
• Irons, Charles F. Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (2009)
• Isaac, Rhys. "Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 To 1775," William and Mary Quarterly (1974) 31#3 pp 345–368 in JSTOR
• Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (1982, 1999) Pulitzer Prize winner, dealing with religion and morality online review
• Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen "Transmitting a Revival Culture: The Organizational Dynamic of the Baptist Movement in Colonial Virginia, 1760–1777," Journal of Southern History (1984) 50#4 pp 551–568 in JSTOR
• Lindman, Janet Moore. "Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary Virginia," William & Mary Quarterly (2000) 57#2 pp. 393–416 in JSTOR
• Lohrenz, Otto. "Impassioned Virginia Loyalist and New Brunswick Pioneer: The Reverend John Agnew," Anglican and Episcopal History (2007) 76#1 pp 29+
• MacMaster, Richard K. "Liberty or Property? The Methodist Petition for Emancipation in Virginia, 1785," Methodist History (1971) 10#1 pp. 44–55
• Nelson, John A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690–1776 (2001)
• Payne, Rodger M. "New Light in Hanover County: Evangelical Dissent in Piedmont Virginia, 1740-1755." Journal of Southern History (1995): 665-694. in JSTOR
• Ragosta, John A. Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia's Religious Dissenters Helped to Win the American Revolution & Secured Religious Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Ragosta, John Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Legacy, America's Creed (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013)
• Rutman, Darrett B., and Anita H. Rutman. A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650–1750 (1984), new social history
• Spangler, Jewel L. Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century (University Press of Virginia, 2008)
• Wertenbaker, Thomas J. The Shaping of Colonial Virginia, comprising Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia (1910) full text online; Virginia under the Stuarts (1914) full text online; and The Planters of Colonial Virginia (1922) full text online; well written but outdated
• Winner, Lauren F. A Cheerful and comfortable faith: Anglican religious practice in the elite households of eighteenth-century Virginia (Yale UP, 2010)