The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry: A Case Study of Lunenburg County, Virginia, 1746-1832

FOUR: The Evangelical Revolt in the Backcountry

There wasconsiderable stir amongthe people in the church meeting­ houses and parish vestries of the Southside in the 1760s and 1770s. As the Rev. James Craig complained, the enthusiastic, itinerant preachers "gain Proselytes every Day,& unless the Prin­ cipal Persons concerned in that Delusion are apprehended, or otherwise restrained from proceeding further, the consequences will be fatal." Of course the evangelical perspective on those de­ velopments was quite different. In the view of the itinerant preach­ ers whose exhortations were witnessed by crowds numbering in the hundreds and occasionally the thousands, the revival of simple religious faith, uncorrupted by the worldly trappings so typical of the established church, was a clear sign of divine favor.' The rise of enthusiastic, evangelical religion was a movement of profound social as well as theological significance in the history of eighteenth­century Virginia, for it posed a striking challenge to an Anglican­gentry culture that had hitherto paid allegiance to an altogether different set of religious forms. Those forms, which relied on an educated clergy discoursing from learned texts before a congregation often seated in strict observance of the prevailing social hierarchy of the parish, were distinctly at odds with the F O U R The Evangelical Revolt in the Backcountry 98 The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry leveling spirit inherent in the evangelical style, which emphasized the self­abasement of all, clergy and congregation alike. In a recent book as important for its methodology as for its fresh interpretation of eighteenth­century Virginia history, Rhys Isaac has identified the "evangelical revolt" as the most dramatic and far­reaching event in the "transformation" of Virginia. That trans­ formation was the process by which the hegemony of the gentry culture was weakened in many spheres, but in particular it was a process by which "the vivid culture of the gentry, with their love of magnificent display, [was made] to coexist with the austere culture of the evangelicals, with their burden of guilt." In Isaac's view, the character of the evangelicals' culture was "structured to an important extent by processes of reaction to the dominant cul­ ture." Moreover, the "revolt" that was occurring was in large mea­ sure indicative of "internal disorder," of inherent weaknesses and contradictions within the Anglican­gentry culture itself. In Isaac's argument, the sources of discontent—revulsion against the osten­ tation of the gentry and against the increasing worldliness of the gentry's Anglican ceremonies—and the purveyors of that discon­ tent—the evangelical ministers who denounced the Anglican gen­ try's moral corruption—were all endemic to Virginia, home­grown products of a culture that was not serving the spiritual and worldly needs of all the Old Dominion's citizens.2 The evangelical challenge to traditional Anglican norms was to some extent a logical response to many of the failings within the Anglican­gentry culture itself, for many Anglicans of the more humble sort had good cause to question whether the religious institutions and rituals of Anglicanism spoke adequately to their own needs. These "internal" failings may therefore explain some of the attraction to the evangelical cause of English men and women living in eastern counties such as Lancaster, Westmore­ land, or Caroline, where Anglicanism had always represented the dominant—indeed, the only—religious and social norm. They are not, however, sufficient explanation for the much more dramatic insurgence of the evangelicals in those counties like Lunenburg, where the hegemony of Anglican leaders was never well estab­ lished and where the population, which was legally bound to sup­ port the Anglican establishment, was much less attached to the The Evangelical Revolt in the Backcountry 99 values of that culture from the very outset. In this sense the "evan­ gelical revolt" in Lunenburg was a phenomenon tied less to the religious history of Virginia than to a much larger and ultimately more far­reaching cultural development throughout the whole of the Southern backcountry. • PATTERNS OF RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION INLUNENBURG William Byrd had likened the immigration of the Scots­Irish from Pennsylvania in the 1730s to the invasion of the "Goths and Van­ dals of Old," yet that migration was only a trickle compared with the flood not only of Scots­Irish but also of Germans and Swiss arriving in the Southside in the 1760s and 1770s. Moreover, the rate of turnover in Lunenburg's population continued nearly una­ bated; while some seventy­five new households were added to the...