In Parts one and two, we saw Granby’s chaffing in its colonial State Church beginnings and the impact of the Great Awakening revival (available on the Drummer website). In Part three of this five-part religious history series, we’ll see the responses to the Great Awakening by the Connecticut colony and by certain New Lights leaving and going South.
The Awakening was characterized by common folks, known as New Lights, under conviction from preaching, trying to live out what their Bibles said. In doing their homework, they found what the state church taught differed from their understanding, which resulted in the church losing its grip on them.
The Connecticut Colony’s response to suppress this was severe. Unprecedented laws were passed that a New Lights person could not be a justice of the peace or hold other offices. Students were expelled from Yale college. Civil penalties against New Lights resulted in them being convicted of felonies with fines and jail time. They were heretics when renouncing infant baptism and were excommunicated. There was even a ban on itinerant preachers, such as Whitefield. Typical was the treatment of Elisha Paine, a pastor in Windham. He was jailed for not paying taxes to the state church because of the New Testament understanding of individual freedom of conscience without a state church. They took “two cows and one steer and now my body held in prison because of the power in their hands.” Such acts continued in Connecticut until 1771.
Two key New Lights who decided to leave the colony’s suppression and head south were Shubal Stearns of Tolland and Daniel Marshall of Windsor. As a result, the Great Awakening continued in the South and set the context for the future Founding Fathers. Stearns, at age 39, was a New Light Congregational Pastor in 1745 who converted after hearing Whitefield. By 1752, he came to the Baptist convictions of adult baptism after belief and the freedom of conscience. He left Connecticut, with 16 people, to Sandy Creek, North Carolina. Daniel Marshall, another Whitefield convert at age 51, was a deacon at First Church in Windsor. He received persecution on a personal level upon his wife’s death. He was forsaken by family, friends and church, left to dig his wife’s grave on his own. He left Connecticut and met Stearns in the South and later married Stearns’ sister.
The two combined for an unusual Southern Great Awakening centered in North Carolina. Marshall was not a preacher but an average man and a mentor / teacher, inspiring disciples. Stearns was a skilled Evangelist preacher speaking to the consciences and hearts of listeners. However, the key skill of both were as motivators: to send out young preachers, organize local independent churches without a clerical form of government, ordain ministers and teaching interdependence of churches. Both persevered in trials and had a zeal to go and share the Good News of Christ. Stearns became known as the Father of Separatists, meaning separation from State Church governments, personal liberty of conscience and the Bible as the only standard for faith and practice.
The result was that 16 people quickly grew to over 600. Over 17 years there were 42 churches and 125 ministries from that one church. The growth process of churches planting churches continued to an estimated 5,000 churches within two generations throughout the South. At age 65, Marshall turned to church planting in Georgia and continued there until he died at age 78. The spread of these Separatist Baptists by word of mouth was like what was seen in the Early Church, creating what became known as the Bible Belt in the South.
Particularly important in Granby’s trail to the First Amendment is the awakening in Virginia. Over the years 1760-1774, 200 churches were established, 150 preachers, more than 20,000 members plus more non-members in attendance. Like New England, the awakening was seen among common people with many of the same responses. As recounted by Elder John Leland (more about Leland next month), this was again thought to be a work of God, as only two of the 150 preachers had any formal education.
The revival success outside of Connecticut, however, stirred up another problem. Eight of the 13 colonies had state churches. This included the three Congregational governments in New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire) and five Episcopal state church governments in the Southern Colonies. Our spotlight now turns to what happened in two counties in Virginia influencing our Founding Fathers.