Central Virginia played a major role in overturning religious persecution

Until the Revolution, the Church of England was Virginia’s “established” church, and everyone in Virginia was required by the General Assembly to attend Anglican church services at least once every four weeks.  1

But just as the light of the sun illuminates even a cloudy day, the light of God’s Word will shine past even the darkness of tyranny.

A revival time which became known as the Great Awakening began with the Anglican minister Jonathan Edwards in New England in 1734.  2

In the Piedmont region of Virginia, the Great Awakening truly took hold in 1746 when Samuel Davies was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and sent from Pennsylvania as an evangelist to Virginia. He obtained a minister’s license from the governor, but since he was not Anglican, he could only preach in a “meeting house”. By the time Rev. Davies ended his service in Virginia, he had charge of fourteen meeting houses in six counties. 3

Patrick Henry’s mother attended one of Samuel Davies’ meeting houses, and she “was in the habit of riding in a double gig, taking with her young Patrick, who, from the first, showed a high appreciation of the preacher. Returning from church, she would make him give the text and a recapitulation of the discourse. She could have done her son no greater service.” 4

Jonathan Edwards wrote in 1749: “I have heard lately a credible account of a remarkable work of conviction and conversion among whites and negroes at Hanover, Virginia, under the ministry of Mr. Davies, who is lately settled there, and has the character of a very ingenious and pious young man.” 5

When Jonathan Edwards died, Samuel Davies was asked to take over as president of the College of New Jersey but he twice refused, preferring to stay in Virginia and continue the revival work there. When the college trustees asked him a third time, Davies asked his highest church court for advice and they directed him to take up the duties at Princeton. 6

When he was a teenager, James Madison’s tutor was his parish rector, Rev. Thomas Martin of Orange County’s St. Thomas parish. Even though Rev. Martin was a Church of England parish rector, he had graduated from the College of New Jersey. 7  

With Rev. Martin’s encouragement, Madison attended college there, studying under the Presbyterian Rev. John Witherspoon (who had become president upon Davies’ death), and who later became the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. 8

Madison graduated in 1771, the same year that 5,000 people attended an open-air revival at “Craig’s Meeting House” in the Blue Run community at Somerset, just a few miles down the road from Madison’s home at Montpelier. 9 That church’s pastor, Elijah Craig, had just been ordained as a Baptist minister in May of 1771. 10

Shortly after that, the sheriff arrested him and took him before three magistrates of Culpeper for preaching without a license. 

Craig spent one month in the Culpeper jail, being fed only rye bread and water, and preaching through the bars of his cell. 11

The imprisonment of Craig and other pastors for preaching without ordination from the Church of England infuriated Madison, who wrote: “That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some; and, to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such purposes. There are at this time in the adjacent county not less than five or six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their religious sentiments, which are in the main very orthodox.” 12

Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Martin were Anglican priests. Samuel Davies and John Witherspoon were Presbyterian clergy. Elijah Craig was a Baptist pastor.

The lives of freedom that we inherited have come down to us because each of those men lived a life of faith based upon their belief that, “the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Cor.3:17)

Sharman’s column appears each Tuesday on the editorial page.

1 VIRGINIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, Vol. 115, No. 2, The Episcopal Church in Virginia, 1607-2007, p. 185
2 Beliles, Mark, “New Evidence of the Influence of Christian Communities in the Central Virginia Piedmont on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Church and State in America, Prepared for the Symposium: Religious Culture in Jefferson’s Virginia, 1740-1830 at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, January 18-20, 1996”
3 Ellis, Thomas Talbot, “Samuel Davies: Apostle of Virginia”, http://www.puritansermons.com/banner/sdavies1.htm
4 Morgan, George, THE TRUE PATRICK HENRY, (1907) p.57
5 Ellis, Thomas Talbot, “Samuel Davies: Apostle of Virginia”, http://www.puritansermons.com/banner/sdavies1.htm
6 Ellis, Thomas Talbot, “Samuel Davies: Apostle of Virginia”, http://www.puritansermons.com/banner/sdavies1.htm
7 Holmes, David Lynn, FAITHS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS, Oxford University Press (2006), p. 92
8 Holmes, David Lynn, FAITHS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS, Oxford University Press (2006), p. 93
9 Beliles, Mark, “New Evidence of the Influence of Christian Communities in the Central Virginia Piedmont on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Church and State in America, Prepared for the Symposium: Religious Culture in Jefferson’s Virginia, 1740-1830 at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, January 18-20, 1996”, p. 810
10 http://www.forkunionbaptist.org/test2/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/an-historical-sketch-of-fork-union-baptist-church.pdf
11 Spencer, J.H., Baptist History Homepage: Elijah Craig http://www.geocities.com/baptist_documents/craig.elijah.by.spencer.html
12 James, Charles F., DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN VIRGINIA. (J.P. Bell Co., Danville, 1900), pp. 214-215