I'm no expert, but I'd agree with you. I came across one mention of a
law in early Va.- I don't know the date- that said a person had to go
to church once every 4 months, and the sermon was not to exceed 20
minutes. Maybe she is, like so many Americans, confusing Va. with
Mass, or assuming all were the same. After the Va. church service
people would gather to talk horse breeding, the price of crops, read
the marriage notices and other community information posted at the
courthouse, etc. It was a time to socialize and get caught up. Unlike
in Mass, Virginia "plantations" were very far apart [and pretty self-
contained], travel was a mess by land, the court days or church
services or weddings and funerals were the main times people saw each
other. While Va. had it's various religious laws, it was not set up
as a religious colony as Mass was. She needs to do a little more
research.
Virginia was not Mass!! Arrgghhhh! I just finished reading William
Kelso's newest book on the recent James Fort discoveries, and he said
that with one exception, every religious relic they there found was
Catholic. So while these first colonists may have been Anglican, they
plainly still harbored Catholic feelings as well. They were not
Puritanical religious zealots. Obviously, their religion was rather
ambiguous. Or flexible.
Nancy
-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
On Jan 15, 2007, at 4:35 PM, Anne Pemberton wrote:
> I appreciate all the responses to the question of the origin of the
> Episcopal church. I will pass them on to the author of D'Arcy ....
> Donna
> Southall.
>
> Now, if I may, a question of the early Church services in
> Jamestown. I've
> always gotten the impression that they were a somewhat irreligious
> group,
> but in the book D'Arcy, she has the hero arriving by ship in time for
> sabbath worship, that lasted many hours, and when he nodded off, he
> was
> clapped in the stocks for his transgression. The typical sabbath
> was three
> hours of preaching, a communal lunch, and back to church for two
> more hours
> of preaching. An awful lot of preaching that one cannot go to sleep
> on!These
> events, to me, sound more like the practices of the Puritans than the
> Anglicans. Am I wrong?
>
> Anne
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/stevepem
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the
> instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
|
