The history of religion in early Virginia begins with the founding of the Virginia Colony, in particular the commencing of Anglican services at Jamestown in 1607. In 1619, the Church of England was made the established church throughout the Colony of Virginia, becoming a dominant religious, cultural, and political force. Throughout the 18th century its power was increasingly challenged by Protestant dissenters and religious movements. Following the American Revolution and political independence from Britain, in 1786 the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom disestablished the Church of England, ending public support and fully legalizing the public and private practice of other religious traditions.
Background After the start of the Columbian Exchange in 1492, subsequent waves of European colonization of the Americas coincided with the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation. With the English Reformation beginning in the 1530s, England broke from the Roman Catholic Church to form the Church of England as its official religion (a status that was at dispute until the end of the 17th century). In turn, within England numerous groups of Protestants (collectively, the English Dissenters) broke from the Church of England for theological and liturgical reasons. The increasing hostility and disputes (often bloody) in Europe between and among Catholics and various groups of Protestants would influence and spill into the European colonization efforts, and in turn affect the internal relations among the colonists through the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1570, a group of Spanish Jesuit missionaries founded the Ajacán Mission in what would become the Tidewater region of Virginia (its exact location uncertain). All but one of the missionaries were killed in 1571 by the indigenous populace. Subsequently, no Catholic churches would be founded in the future territory of Virginia until after the American Revolution. Despite this, archaeological discoveries of Catholic artifacts at the Jamestown site have led to speculation that at least a few of the early Jamestown settlers may have been crypto-Catholic.
Arrival of Anglicanism Anglicanism arrived in the Americas (and specifically what was then considered "Virginia") with the ill-fated Roanoke Colony (located in present-day North Carolina). Its brief existence saw recorded the first baptisms in North America into the Church of England.
Anglican chaplain Robert Hunt was among the first group of English colonists arriving in Virginia in 1607 (and among those dead by 1608). He was succeeded as chaplain by Richard Buck, who served in the post until his death in 1624. By the time the Virginia Company of London was dissolved in 1624, authorities in England had sent 22 Anglican clergymen to the colony.
Early missionaries
Religious leaders in England felt they had a duty as missionaries to bring Christianity (or more specifically, the religious practices and beliefs of the Church of England, in contrast to the Latin incursion of Central and South America), to the Native Americans.
There was an assumption that their own "mistaken" spiritual beliefs were largely the result of a lack of education and literacy since the Powhatan did not have a need for a written language. Therefore, teaching them these skills would logically result in what the English saw as "enlightenment" in their religious practices, and bring them into the fold of the church. One of the earliest of these missionaries was Reverend Alexander Whitaker, who served from 1611 until his death in 1616. Efforts in the early 17th century to establish a school for the Virginia Indians at Henricus were abandoned following the Indian massacre of 1622 with the killing of a large number of the immigrant population by the Powhatan and subscent retaliations by the colonists, and would not come about for another century.
Apart from the Nansemond tribe, which had converted in 1638, and a few isolated individuals over the years, the other Powhatan tribes as a whole did not fully convert to Christianity until 1791.Rountree p. 161–162, 168–170, 175
Established church
The Church of England was legally established in the colony in 1619. In practice, establishment meant that local taxes were funneled through the local parish to handle the needs of local government, such as roads and poor relief, in addition to the salary of the minister.
Anglican parishes As in England, the parish became a unit of local importance, equal in power and practical aspects to other entities, such as the courts and even the House of Burgesses and the Governor's Council (the two houses of the Virginia General Assembly).
A typical parish contained three or four churches, as the parish churches needed to be close enough for people to travel to worship services, where attendance was expected of everyone. Expansion and subdivision of the church parishes followed population growth. The intention of the Virginia parish system was to place a church not more than six miles (10 km)-easy riding distance-from every home in the colony. Likewise the shires, soon after initial establishment in 1634 known as counties, were planned to be not more than a day's ride from all residents, so that court and other business could be attended to in a practical manner.
A parish was normally led spiritually by a rector and governed by a committee of layman members generally respected in the community, which was known as the vestry. There never was a bishop in colonial Virginia, and in practice, the local vestry controlled the parish.Edward L. Bond and Joan R. Gundersen, The Episcopal Church in Virginia, 1607–2007 (2007) Indeed, there was fierce political opposition to having a bishop in the colony; the Anglican priests themselves were supervised directly by the Bishop of London. By the 1740s, the established Anglican church had about 70 parish priests around the colony.
Parishes typically had a church farm (or "glebe") to help support it financially.Philip Alexander, Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Religious, Moral, Educational, Legal, Military, and Political Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records (1910) pp. 55–177 Each county court gave tax money to the local vestry. The vestry provided the priest a glebe of 200 or , a house, and perhaps some livestock. The vestry paid him an annual salary of 16,000 pounds-of-tobacco, plus 1 pound (20 shillings) for every wedding and funeral. While not poor, the priests lived modestly and their opportunities for improvement were slim.
After a crop failure caused the price of tobacco to jump, the Two Penny Act was enacted by the General Assembly in 1758, allowing clergy to be paid instead at the rate of two pence per pound of tobacco owed them. The act was nullified by the government in Britain, angering some colonists and leading to a high-profile lawsuit by the clergy for back-pay, which became known as the Parson's Cause.
Alternatives to the established church Colonists were typically inattentive, uninterested, and bored during Anglican church services, according to the ministers, who complained that the people were sleeping, whispering, ogling the fashionably dressed women, walking about and coming and going, or at best looking out the windows or staring blankly into space.Jacob M. Blosser, "Irreverent Empire: Anglican Inattention in an Atlantic World," Church History, Sept 2008, Vol. 77 Issue 3, pp. 596–628 The lack of towns means the church had to serve scattered settlements, while the acute shortage of trained ministers meant that piety was hard to practice outside the home. Some ministers solved this problem by encouraging parishioners to become devout at home, using the Book of Common Prayer for private prayer and devotion. This allowed devout Anglicans to lead an active and sincere religious life apart from the unpopular formal church services. However the stress on private devotion weakened the need for a bishop or a large institutional church of the sort Blair wanted. The stress on personal piety opened the way for the First Great Awakening, which pulled people away from the established church.Edward L. Bond, "Anglican theology and devotion in James Blair's Virginia, 1685–1743," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1996, Vol. 104 Issue 3, pp. 313–40
The Act of Toleration 1689 (1 Will. & Mar. c. 18) had allowed freedom of worship for certain Nonconformist Protestant groups in England, with conditions and legal constraints. Similar tolerance was put in place in Virginia. Baptists, German Lutherans and Presbyterians, funded their own ministers, and favored disestablishment of the Anglican church. However, by the mid-18th century, Baptists and Presbyterians faced growing persecution; between 1768 and 1774, about half of the Baptist ministers in Virginia were jailed for preaching.
Especially in the back country, most families had no religious affiliation whatsoever and their low moral standards were shocking to proper Englishmen.Charles Woodmason, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant ed. by Richard J. Hooker (1969) The Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and other evangelicals directly challenged these lax moral standards and refused to tolerate them in their ranks. The evangelicals identified as sinful the traditional standards of masculinity which revolved around gambling, drinking, and brawling, and arbitrary control over women, children, and slaves. The religious communities enforced new standards, creating a new male leadership role that followed Christian principles and became dominant in the 19th century.Janet Moore Lindman, "Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary Virginia," William & Mary Quarterly, April 2000, Vol. 57 Issue 2, pp. 393–416
Presbyterians
The Presbyterians were evangelical dissenters, mostly Scotch-Irish Americans who expanded in Virginia between 1740 and 1758, immediately before the Baptists. The Church of Scotland had first adopted presbyterian ideas in the 1560s, which brought it into continuing conflict with the Church of England following the Union of Crowns.
Where Presbyterians dominated the parish and county, they could exercise power through the established church's vestry, whose composition reflected their leadership and influence. For example, Presbyterians filled at least nine of the twelve positions on the first vestry of Augusta parish in Staunton, Virginia, founded in 1746.History of Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia
The First Great Awakening impacted the area in the 1740s, leading Samuel Davies to be sent from Pennsylvania in 1747 to lead and minister to religious dissenters in Hanover County, Virginia. He eventually helped found the first presbytery in Virginia (the Presbytery of HanoverJames H. Smylie, http://pres-outlook.net/reports-a-resources3/presbyterian-heritage-articles3/846.html Retrieved September 18, 2012.), evangelized slaves (remarkable in its time,Presidents of Princeton from princeton.edu. Retrieved September 18, 2012.), and influenced young Patrick Henry who traveled with his mother to listen to sermons.Encyclopedia Virginia http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Awakening_in_Virginia_The