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Subject: H-SHEAR Review: Karali on Spangler, _Virginians Reborn_

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Jewel L. Spangler. _Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical
Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century_. 

Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2008. viii + 288 pp. 

ISBN 978-0-8139-2679-7; $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-2679-7.

Reviewed for H-SHEAR by Vassiliki Karali, University of Edinburgh

Eighteenth-century Baptist Expansion in Virginia: Some Myths and
Realities

In _Virginians Reborn_, Jewel L. Spangler offers a close examination of
the rise of the Baptists in Virginia in the second half of the
eighteenth century. In this, she joins a host of historians of the
present generation who have set out to reexamine carefully the religious
history of the colonial era and the early Republic with an aim to
"assess the emergence of the Bible Belt and understand the nature and
rise of evangelicalism in the nation" (p. 2). In this sense, Ellen
Eslinger, John Sparks, Janet Moore Lindman, Monica Najar, and Philip N.
Mulder--to name but a few--can be deemed Spangler's like- minded
colleagues. Lindman has studied Baptist households in Pennsylvania and
Virginia, Eslinger and Sparks examined evangelicalism in Kentucky and
Appalachian North Carolina, while Najar and Mulder endeavored to analyze
the specific character of evangelical revivals in the South.[1] To
produce more accurate results, historians tend to adopt a localized
perspective, as well as new concepts in historiography, such as gender,
race, and household privacy. This trend has produced significant work on
the early religious history of America to the extent that doubt is being
cast on various stereotypical ideas that have previously misguided the
study of Evangelicals. One of these is the perception of Baptists as
distinctive people, who operated in opposition to the dominant social
and political order of the time. Spangler convincingly argues against
this view, while she endeavors to place their activities in the correct
religious, social, and political context. In this respect, she devotes a
large part of his book to the description of the contours of Baptist
expansion. These included the Church of England and the activities of
Presbyterians, as well as the War of Independence and its repercussions
on early American religious and political culture.

_Virginians Reborn_ is organized in six chapters. In the first chapter,
Spangler describes the strengths and weaknesses of the Anglican Church,
which made possible the expansion of Baptists at the end of the
eighteenth century. She argues that the Church of England was
omnipresent in the life of its parishioners, especially in the tidewater
region. The vestries selected the minister and were in charge of the
financial administration of the parish, while the churchwardens
endeavored to correct those who were not church regulars and catered for
the dispossessed. In addition, a flourish in church building between
1730 and 1749 meant that the church strengthened its hold on the colony.
Nevertheless, the Anglican Church endured weaknesses in its operation,
such as the recruitment of low-paid Scottish ministers, its
unattractiveness to slaves and European settlers, persistent ministerial
vacancies, and incompetence. These factors reduced the impact of the
Church of England on the lives of Virginians, particularly in the West.
Moreover, the absence of a resident bishop, who would have confirmed the
youth, the growing number of unchurched population, and large parishes
facilitated the task of dissenters. The latter made inroads into the
colony, starting from its periphery.

In the second chapter, Spangler studies the Presbyterians, evangelical
dissenters, who had expanded in Virginia between 1740 and 1758,
immediately before the Baptists. She endeavors to analyze the reasons
behind their spread and the nature of their beliefs. She argues that due
to their frequent services, Presbyterians were successful in regions
where the Anglican Church was weak, namely in the Piedmont and the
valley of Virginia. Uneducated people and slaves were attracted to
Presbyterian emotional worship, its emphasis on biblical simplicity, and
psalm singing. Presbyterians were, therefore, particularly appealing to
those whom the Church of England failed to reach. That is the reason
why--Spangler notes--Presbyterians did not operate as social outcasts in
opposition to the established church and authorities, but in a
complementary way to them. Besides, Presbyterian adherents represented 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.

In the third chapter, Spangler enters into her main theme, which is the
rise and expansion of the Baptists in Virginia. She starts her
investigation by describing the distinctiveness of Baptist worship,
namely, its emotive aspect and adult Baptism. She then maintains that
one of the main reasons for their success was the ability of the
Baptists to recruit fast inspiring preachers, who would engage in
itinerancy and revival meetings. She also suggests that the Baptists,
like the Presbyterians, profited from the institutional weaknesses of
the Anglican Church. These weaknesses included poor ministerial supply
and inadequate responses to the threat of dissenters, particularly in
the valley, the Southwest, and the northern neck of Virginia. In the
tidewater, the loss of status endured by the local Anglican elite,
anticlericalism, and disputes within the Anglican camp facilitated the
task of the Baptists.

In the fourth chapter, Spangler examines further the character of the
Baptist faith and social conduct, as experienced in the eighteenth
century. She suggests that the strictness with which the Baptists
enforced their views on morality, the spread of unlicensed preachers,
and a relatively "democratic" church administration led their
contemporary critics and historians to brand them as revolutionaries. 

After close examination, Spangler maintains that Baptist distinctiveness
was limited. Baptist congregations were socially diverse and they
embraced the norms of the dominant order through patriarchy, office
holding, and slaveholding. Moreover, on the eve of the War of
Independence, they shared the concerns of the political and moral
authorities on such issues as propriety in sexual conduct, drinking,
frivolous spending, church attendance, and revelry.

In the fifth chapter, Spangler describes in detail the conversion to the
Baptist faith. She presents it as a three-part process, which included
conviction of one's sins, a liminal-transitional phase, and final
conversion. The Baptists were attacked by their critics because of their
detachment from their previous social environment during conversion and
due to the intense emotionality of the revival meetings. Spangler
ascribes the distinctiveness of Baptist communities to the close ties
held between their members and the breakdown of privacy barriers between
them. In this context, old social hierarchies were eliminated. Household
heads had to give up some of their privileges to submit themselves to
the scrutiny of their fellow congregants.

In the final chapter, Spangler explores the reasons behind the Baptists'
expansion at the end of the eighteenth century. She argues that through
the Revolutionary War experience, the dominant political culture
underwent a change that brought it closer to the ways of the Baptists.
In the meantime, the latter adjusted their organization and political
rhetoric to integrate better than in their early stages with the
political and social landscape of the time. The increased emphasis
placed on merit and the fact that free white adult males acquired more
rights in Virginia at the end of the revolutionary period were
advancements close to the culture of the Baptists, who themselves valued
spiritual gifts and merit. At the same time, the Baptists approached
aspects of the main political and social norms. They supported the
patriot cause, established an increasing number of permanent
congregations, and encouraged their members to maintain the social ties
that they held prior to converting. These adjustments in Baptist
practices together with the disestablishment of the Church of England in
1786 quelled opposition to the new sect and allowed it to move closer to
the mainstream of southern religious culture in the nineteenth century.

Spangler's _Virginians Reborn_ is an excellent work of scholarship that
describes in detail the world of early Baptists in Virginia. The wealth
of resources used is remarkable. These include--apart from sermons and
contemporary lay accounts--tax and court records, vestry minutes, and
Baptist churches' minute books. This diversity of material has allowed
the author to examine closely and vividly Baptist practices and ideas,
along with responses of non-Baptists to the Baptist expansion. She has
achieved so without drowning the narrative with statistical jargon and
elaborate socioeconomic analysis. 

Moreover, she exhibits a depth of knowledge of the religious, political,
and religious history of the era, which provided a context to the
Baptist expansion. The first two chapters of the book examine this
historical background and serve adequately as an introduction to the
main topic. Spangler's analysis is accompanied by two maps and a table,
although more maps illustrating the religious geography of Virginia
would have been helpful to the reader.

The major strength of _Virginians Reborn_ is the way in which the author
engages in historiographic debate. Spangler challenges set ideas on such
issues as the character of the rise of the Presbyterians, the extent of
Baptist distinctiveness, and the circumstances that allowed Baptist
expansion after the War of Independence. So far, historians have offered
few inspiring comments on these questions. Assisted by local evidence,
Spangler examines them in a refreshing, new way, presenting alternative
suggestions in a convincing fashion. As a result, she contributes
constructively to the debate in the field. In this sense, _Virginians
Reborn_ is useful both for courses on the religious history of America
and as an exemplary piece of high-quality academic research and
methodology, valuable to any historian.

Note

[1]. Janet Moore Lindman, "A World of Baptists: Gender, Race and
Religious Community in Pennsylvania and Virginia, 1689-1825" (PhD diss.,
University of Minnesota, 1994); Janet Moore Lindman, ''Acting the Manly
Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary Virginia,"
_William and Mary Quarterly_ 57 (2000): 393-41; Ellen Eslinger,
_Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism_
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999); John Sparks, _The
Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The Life of Elder Shubal Stearns_
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001); Monica Najar,
_Evangelizing the South: A Social History of Church and State in Early
America_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Philip N.
Mulder, _A Controversial Spirit: Evangelical Awakenings in the South_
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).


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