Contested Communion: The Limits of White Solidarity in Nat Turner's Virginia

David Barrow, one of the most vocal antislavery activists of the revolutionary era, played a central role in establishing several Baptist churches in southern Virginia. Barrow's strong antislavery position created significant tensions within these churches. Those who sought to uphold Barrow's antislavery teachings faced stiff resistance from others who accepted and defended chattel slavery. This conflict hindered communion on several occasions between the 1790s and the 1830s as David Barrow's churches debated the possibility of fellowship in the churches so deeply divided on the question of slavery. This paper examines these debates over time and finds that Barrow's former churches clearly distanced themselves from Barrow's antislavery position even as they confirmed a commitment to a non-egalitarian interracial fellowship. During David Barrow's ministry, conflict erupted in the 1790s as Sarah Barrow, David Barrow's wife, and others, tried to exclude slaveholders from communion at Black Creek Baptist Church. These efforts failed. Decades later, another minister at Black Creek Baptist Church, Jonathan Lankford, renewed the debate when he announced that he would withhold communion from the church's slaveholders. This effort to remove slaveholders from communion failed, and Lankford was removed as minister and excommunicated from the church. After Nat Turner's revolt, all of Barrow's former churches suspended their black members. As the fear of another revolt declined, whites debated the wisdom and propriety of resuming interracial fellowship. Despite the intense racial tensions following the revolt, each of Barrow's former churches ultimately determined to bring blacks back into communion.