Shiloh-Marion Baptist Church and Cemetery is a historic place in

Buena Vista, Georgia Buena Vista ( ) is a city in Marion County, Georgia, Marion County, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States. It is part of the Columbus, Georgia-Alabama Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,1 ...

. The Greek Revival style church building was constructed in 1835 and added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1984. It is a one-story one-room wood-frame building with a

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

roof, on stone piers. It is covered with

weatherboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'' in modern Americ ...

siding and has no exterior ornamentation. With . One reason the church was deemed significant is that it represents the former community of Church Hill. It is the only surviving structure of the community, which once had five churches plus an academy. It had a phone line in 1885 and it had a post office until 1903. Its NRHP nomination notes an association to the Christian Union faith:

In religious history, the church is important for representing the intensity of churches that once existed here, including the important Christian Union faith, which was founded by the Reverend George Lynch Smith. It had all of its few churches in this area. It is important that in the deep, tradition-rooted antebellum South, a minister could gather a flock, albeit small, around the tenets of a new faith, an offshoot of the Church of Christ movement. Although it lasted only a few decades, it is important in Georgia's religious heritage, and this is the only vestige of the community in which it was located. Traditional accounts are that many meetings were held in other church structures, for the Christian Union faith did not always have its own churches. Thus, some of their meetings had to be held in other churches, such as this one.

References

Baptist cemeteries in the United States Baptist churches in Georgia (U.S. state) Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) Churches completed in 1835 19th-century Baptist churches in the United States Buildings and structures in Marion County, Georgia Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) National Register of Historic Places in Marion County, Georgia {{US-cemetery-stub