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 The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

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 A dissenter (from the Latin ''dissentire'', "to disagree") is one who dissents (disagrees) in matters of opinion, belief, etc. Usage in Christianity Dissent from the Anglican church In the social and religious history of England and Wales, an ...

and religious movements. Following the American Revolution and political independence from Britain, in 1786 the

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and introduced into the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond in 1779. On January 16, 1786, the Assembly enacted the statute into the s ...

disestablished the Church of England, ending public support and fully legalizing the public and private practice of other religious traditions.

Background

After the start of the Columbian Exchange in 1492, subsequent waves of

European colonization of the Americas During the Age of Discovery, a large scale European colonization of the Americas took place between about 1492 and 1800. Although the Norse had explored and colonized areas of the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short t ...

coincided with the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and ...

and Counter-Reformation. With the English Reformation beginning in the 1530s, England broke from the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

to form the

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 The Ajacán Mission () (also Axaca, Axacam, Iacan, Jacán, Xacan) was a Spanish attempt in 1570 to establish a Jesuit mission in the vicinity of the Virginia Peninsula to bring Christianity to the Virginia Indians. The effort to found St. Mar ...

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.

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 North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

). Its brief existence saw recorded the first

baptism Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost ...

s 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 The London Company, officially known as the Virginia Company of London, was a division of the Virginia Company with responsibility for colonizing the east coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N. History Origins The territor ...

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 The Powhatan people (; also spelled Powatan) may refer to any of the indigenous Algonquian people that are traditionally from eastern Virginia. All of the Powhatan groups descend from the Powhatan Confederacy. In some instances, 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 Alexander Whitaker (1585–1616) was an English Anglican theologian who settled in North America in Virginia Colony in 1611 and established two churches near the Jamestown colony. He was also known as "The Apostle of Virginia" by contemporaries. ...

, 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 The "Citie of Henricus"—also known as Henricopolis, Henrico Town or Henrico—was a settlement in Virginia founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1611 as an alternative to the swampy and dangerous area around the original English settlement at Jamest ...

were abandoned following the

Indian Massacre of 1622 The Indian massacre of 1622, popularly known as the Jamestown massacre, took place in the English Colony of Virginia, in what is now the United States, on 22 March 1622. John Smith, though he had not been in Virginia since 1609 and was not an e ...

, 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.

Established church

The

was legally established in the colony in 1619. In practice, establishment meant that local taxes were funneled through the local

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...

to handle the needs of local government, such as roads and poor relief, in addition to the salary of the minister.

Anglican parishes

As in England, the ''parish'' became a unit of local importance, equal in power and practical aspects to other entities, such as the courts and even the

House of Burgesses The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. With the creation of the House of Burgesses in 1642, the General Assembly, which had been establishe ...

and the

Governor's Council The governments of the Thirteen Colonies of British America developed in the 17th and 18th centuries under the influence of the British constitution. After the Thirteen Colonies had become the United States, the experience under colonial rule would ...

(the two houses of the

Virginia General Assembly The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World, and was established on July 30, 16 ...

). A typical parish contained three or four churches, as the parish churches needed to be close enough for people to travel to worship services, where attendance was expected of everyone. Expansion and subdivision of the church parishes followed population growth. The intention of the Virginia parish system was to place a church not more than six miles (10 km)-easy riding distance-from every home in the colony. Likewise the ''shires'', soon after initial establishment in 1634 known as counties, were planned to be not more than a day's ride from all residents, so that court and other business could be attended to in a practical manner. A parish was normally led spiritually by a

rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

and governed by a committee of layman members generally respected in the community, which was known as the

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

. There never was a bishop in colonial Virginia, and in practice, the local vestry controlled the parish. Indeed, there was fierce political opposition to having a bishop in the colony; the Anglican priests themselves were supervised directly by the

Bishop of London A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

. By the 1740s, the established Anglican church had about 70 parish priests around the colony. Parishes typically had a church farm (or "

glebe Glebe (; also known as church furlong, rectory manor or parson's close(s))McGurk 1970, p. 17 is an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest. The land may be owned by the church, or its profits may be reserved ...

") to help support it financially. Each county court gave tax money to the local vestry. The vestry provided the priest a glebe of 200 or , a house, and perhaps some livestock. The vestry paid him an annual salary of 16,000 pounds-of-tobacco, plus 1 pound (20 shillings) for every wedding and funeral. While not poor, the priests lived modestly and their opportunities for improvement were slim. After a crop failure caused the price of tobacco to jump, the

Two Penny Act The Two Penny Act was a law enacted in 1758 by the House of Burgesses which affected the compensation of Anglican ministers in the British colony of Virginia. From the controversy surrounding it arose the Parson's Cause trial, which is regarded ...

was enacted by the General Assembly in 1758, allowing clergy to be paid instead at the rate of two pence per pound of tobacco owed them. The act was nullified by the government in Britain, angering some colonists and leading to a high-profile lawsuit by the clergy for back-pay, which became known as the

Parson's Cause The "Parson's Cause" was a legal and political dispute in the Colony of Virginia often viewed as an important event leading up to the American Revolution. Colonel John Henry, father of Patrick Henry, was the judge who presided over the court case ...

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. 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 The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...

'' 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 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 affecte ...

, which pulled people away from the established church. 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 The religion of Protestantism, a form of Christianity, was founded within Germany in the 16th-century Reformation. It was formed as a new direction from some Roman Catholic principles. It was led initially by Martin Luther and later by John Cal ...

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. 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.

Presbyterians

The Presbyterians were evangelical dissenters, mostly

Scotch-Irish Americans Scotch-Irish (or Scots-Irish) Americans are American descendants of Ulster Protestants who emigrated from Ulster in northern Ireland to America during the 18th and 19th centuries, whose ancestors had originally migrated to Ireland mainly from t ...

who expanded in Virginia between 1740 and 1758, immediately before the Baptists. The

Church of Scotland The Church of Scotland ( sco, The Kirk o Scotland; gd, Eaglais na h-Alba) is the national church in Scotland. The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox, in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church ...

had first adopted presbyterian ideas in the 1560s, which brought it into continuing conflict with the Church of England following the

Union of Crowns The Union of the Crowns ( gd, Aonadh nan Crùintean; sco, Union o the Crouns) was the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of the Kingdom of England as James I and the practical unification of some functions (such as overseas dip ...

. 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. 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 Hanover County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 109,979. Its county seat is Hanover Courthouse. Hanover County is a part of the Greater Richmond Region. History Located in the wester ...

. He eventually helped found the first presbytery in Virginia (the

Presbytery of Hanover Presbytery and presbyterium may refer to: * Presbyterium, a body of ordained, active priests in the Catholic or Anglican churches * Presbytery (architecture), the area of a church building more commonly referred to as the "chancel" or "sanctuary" ...

), evangelized slaves (remarkable in its time,), and influenced young

Patrick Henry Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736June 6, 1799) was an American attorney, planter, politician and orator known for declaring to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): " Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first a ...

who traveled with his mother to listen to sermons. 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. 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.

Baptists

Helped by the First Great Awakening and numerous itinerant self-proclaimed missionaries, by the 1760s Baptists were drawing Virginians, especially poor white farmers, into a new, much more democratic religion. Slaves were welcome at the services and many became Baptists at this time. Baptist services were highly emotional; the only ritual was baptism, which was applied by immersion (not sprinkling like the Anglicans) only to adults. Opposed to the low moral standards prevalent in the colony, the Baptists strictly enforced their own high standards of personal morality, with special concern for sexual misconduct, heavy drinking, frivolous spending, missing services, cursing, and revelry. Church trials were held frequently and members who did not submit to disciple were expelled. Historians have debated the implications of the religious rivalries for the American Revolution. The Baptist farmers did introduce a new egalitarian ethic that largely displaced the semi-aristocratic ethic of the Anglican planters. However, both groups supported the Revolution. There was a sharp contrast between the austerity of the plain-living Baptists and the opulence of the Anglican planters, who controlled local government. Baptist church discipline, mistaken by the gentry for radicalism, served to ameliorate disorder. As population became more dense, the county court and the Anglican Church were able to increase their authority. The Baptists protested vigorously; the resulting social disorder resulted chiefly from the ruling gentry's disregard of public need. The vitality of the religious opposition made the conflict between 'evangelical' and 'gentry' styles a bitter one. The strength of the evangelical movement's organization determined its ability to mobilize power outside the conventional authority structure. The struggle for religious toleration erupted and was played out during the American Revolution, as the Baptists, in alliance with Anglicans

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

and

James Madison James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father. He served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for h ...

worked successfully to disestablish the Anglican church.

Methodists

Methodism Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's br ...

arose in the 18th century as a movement within the Anglican church. Methodist missionaries were active in the late colonial period. From 1776 to 1815, Methodist Bishop

Francis Asbury Francis Asbury (August 20 or 21, 1745 – March 31, 1816) was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ...

made 42 trips into the western parts of Virginia to visit Methodist congregations. Methodists encouraged an end to slavery, and welcomed free blacks and slaves into active roles in the congregations. Like the Baptists, Methodists made conversions among slaves and free blacks, and provided more of a welcome to them than in the Anglican Church. Some blacks were selected as preachers. During the Revolutionary War, about 700 Methodist slaves sought freedom behind British lines. The British transported them and other Black Loyalists, as they were called, for resettlement to its colony of

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

. In 1791 Britain helped some of the Black Loyalists, who had encountered racism among other Loyalists, and problems with the climate and land given to them, to resettle in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

in Africa. Following the Revolution, in the 1780s, itinerant Methodist preachers carried copies of an anti-slavery petition in their saddlebags throughout the state, calling for an end to slavery. In addition, they encouraged slaveholders to manumit their slaves. So many slaveholders did so that the proportion of free blacks in Virginia in the first two decades after the Revolutionary War increased to 7.3 percent of the population, from less than one percent. At the same time, counter-petitions were circulated. The petitions were presented to the Assembly; they were debated, but no legislative action was taken, and after 1800 there was gradually reduced religious opposition to slavery as it had renewed economic importance after invention of the cotton gin.

Religious freedom and disestablishment

At the start of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

, 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. 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. 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 Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freed ...

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

, was appointed in 1790 as the first

Episcopal Bishop of Virginia The Diocese of Virginia is the 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 Episco ...

and he slowly rebuilt the denomination within freedom of choice of belief and worship.Thomas E. Buckley, ''Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787'' (1977) 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 The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the ...

, ratified in December 1791.

References

{{Reflist, 2