Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century. By Jewel L. Spangler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2008. x + 293 pp. $45.00 cloth.

摘要

Did “evangelical dissent” actually change in any significant manner the social,nracial, and political landscape of once-Anglican Virginia by the end of theneighteenth century? Attempting to answer this question, Jewel Spangler hasnplaced the rise of the Baptists in the center of a debate that has been going onnnow since the 1970s. Spangler ably summarizes the conditions of British NorthnAmerican Anglicanism in the Old Dominion before turning to the challengenposed by the Presbyterians at mid-century. She argues that the VirginianAnglican parishes by the 1760s had become far more successful than at anyntime in Virginia’s past, in part because a good number of parish ministers were either homegrown or Scottish imports. The number of English parsons declinednoverall, and a fair degree of mutual understanding characterized clerical-laynrelationships at the parish level. Even outside the relatively well-payingnTidewater parishes, Anglicanism as a “way of life” apparently reached ansignificant part of the colony’s population. Although she knows the literaturenon the devotional life of Anglicans, one might wish that she could havenprovided a bit more insight into whether sermons and devotional literature suchnas the famous Virginia edition of the WholeDutyofMan actually made andifference in deepening the attractions of the English Church amongnVirginians. Spangler knows that little success attended Anglican forays into thenreligious life of enslaved Africans (27–28), and she wisely concludes that thenrise of the Presbyterians did nothing to challenge prevailing social or racialnconventions in Virginia, in either the Tidewater or the Piedmont (71–75).