For Ye Know Not When the Master of the House Cometh: Privacy and Power in the Development of North Carolina's Religious Culture
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For Ye Know Not When the Master of the House Cometh: Privacy and Power in the Development of North Carolina's Religious Culture J Mark Leslie A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History Chapel Hill 2011 Approved by: John Wood Sweet Kathleen DuVal William Barney Laurie Maffly-Kipp Harry Watson Abstract J Mark Leslie: For Ye Know Not When the Master of the House Cometh: Privacy and Power in the Development of North Carolina's Religious Culture (Under the direction of John Wood Sweet) This dissertation makes three interrelated points. First, the religious landscape of colonial North Carolina was diverse. For the colony's Anglican governors, a stable Anglican establishment would have created a stable and loyal colony. Unfortunately for these governors, the colony remained diverse until the end colonial period. Second, religious celebrations were often both about celebrating the divine and also about affirming more worldly relationships. Third, this project calls into question narratives of development that are premised upon the assumption that the colonial "South" was largely Anglican. Some historians assert that evangelicalism brought with it a more individualistic religious culture that replaced an Anglican culture that focused on community and hierarchy. Other historians claim that evangelicals were unsuccessful in challenging men's claims to dominion over their households. This dissertation, however, claims that Anglican culture in colonial North Carolina was far from hegemonic, and instead a diversity of religious groups developed diverse communities in North Carolina. Some of those religious groups developed community standards that challenged men's claims to dominion over their households while others developed communities that celebrated men's authority over their households. By the antebellum period, however, this diverse religious landscape had been replaced by a new cultural hegemony in which ii households were seen as private spaces largely beyond the reach of religious inspection and correction. Ministers and groups who violated this privacy either chose to leave North Carolina in order to preserve their spiritual purity or they were forced out of positions of authority. The religious communities and leaders that thrived left men free to govern their households. iii Table of Contents List of Figures.................................................................................................................... v Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I. Submit Yourselves to Your Masters: The Precarious Anglican Establishment in Colonial North Carolina.................................................. 21 II. Build Up One Another in Faithfulness: Surveillance and Discipline within North Carolina’s Eighteenth-Century Quaker Communities...................... 64 III. A House Divided Cannot Stand: Secularism and Disownment in the Age of Revolution................................................................................................. 110 IV. Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: North Carolina's Antebellum Religious Culture....................................................................................................... 145 Conclusion...................................................................................................................... 202 Appendix......................................................................................................................... 207 Select Bibliography........................................................................................................ 253 iv List of Figures Figure 1. Disownments for Non-Marital Sex or Marriage out of Unity..........................129 2. Other Disownments at Cane Creek Monthly Meeting......................................130 v Introduction Having served as the royal governor of North Carolina for six years, Arthur Dobbs reflected upon the miserable state of the colony’s religious establishment. In a letter to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), Dobbs emphasized two basic problems with North Carolina’s established religion. First, he was concerned about the paucity of ministers and congregations in North Carolina. The efforts of the SPG had accomplished much, but the Anglican Church remained weak in the colony. Second, he believed that the people attending Anglican worship in North Carolina were far from model parishioners Dobbs claimed that establishing two bishops over the North American colonies would solve both of these problems. These bishops would help colonists become Anglican ministers by enabling colonists to receive ordination without the long and expensive journey to Britain. According to Dobbs, by 1760 there were still only "8 resident Clergymen" in North Carolina. Some colonies to the north suffered a similar dearth but "tho' they have not Episcopal Clergy yet have other instructors which give them Christian Principles, when there is a total want here, having only strollers who set up for teachers, without any regular instruction." Dobbs also hoped that bishops in the colonies could operate some sort of spiritual court in order to separate "the faulty from communion.” Better discipline among Anglican communities, Dobbs was convinced, “would…have a good effect." As things stood, however, Dobbs thought North Carolina's Anglican establishment a failure. If more missionaries or stationed ministers could be brought to North Carolina then perhaps the colony could "lessen the sectaries." Without some reform or more assistance, however, the dissenters would continue to "abound in 1 this and the neighbouring colonies." 1 In his call for two Anglican bishops over the North American colonies, Dobbs was not particularly unique--other reformers had similarly called for the establishment of a North American bishop--but his calls for reform expressed the particularly desperate state of the Anglican Church in North Carolina. 2 Dobbs' plea to the SPG reveals three points that will be integral for this dissertation. First, colonial North Carolina was a religiously diverse colony. The Anglican establishment was much weaker than we have previously assumed. There were more sectarians, and there were perhaps more unchurched people than we have often assumed. Second, for Dobbs as well as for historians of Southern religion, church rituals were both about celebrating the divine and affirming community relationships. Ritual life within religious communities often affirmed local power structures even as these rituals celebrated the divine. Third, expanding the chronology of this study from the colonial era through the early republic enables this study to reexamine the significance of changes in North Carolina's religion. Indeed, this study questions the common narrative that indicates North Carolina's religion evolved from hierarchal Anglicanism to a more democratic evangelicalism. Instead, this study reveals a diverse colonial world in which Anglicans labored to create communities that would prove more obedient to the king in parliament, but they were often unsuccessful. Groups that affirmed different power 1"Governor Arthur Dobbs to Philip Bearcroft," 22 January 1760, The Colonial Records of North Carolina: Published Under the Supervision of the Trustees of the Public Libraries by order of the General Assembly , ed. William L. Saunders, vol. 6 (Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Pub. Co., 1993-1994), 222-223. 2In Rhys Isaac’s The Transformation of Virginia , for example, Isaac explores a similar proposal by a group of Virginian Anglican ministers to establish a bishop in North America. Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 , (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 1982), 181-186. 2 structures within their communities were arguably more successful in spreading their culture across North Carolina. By the antebellum period, however, religious rituals had been restricted by expectations of privacy. First, Anglican missionaries and governors agreed that there were few missionaries or established congregations, and they agreed that most North Carolinians were by-and-large ignorant of Anglican religion. The religious world that Arthur Dobbs described in 1760 was not one of religious homogeneity but one of great religious diversity. The historical literature, however, often implies that Anglicans typified and defined the colony's religious culture. One historian of religion in colonial North Carolina, for example, thought the paucity of Anglican clergymen in colonial North Carolina should not lead historians to the conclusion that most North Carolinians were non-Anglican. According to Walter Consor, we may incorrectly assume that Anglicanism was weak in colonial North Carolina if we "too glibly [assume] that numbers meant power." 3 According to Consor, there was a strong culture of Anglicanism 3Walter Consor, A Coat of Many Colors , (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 73. Other historians of colonial Anglicanism in North Carolina have described North Carolina as having perhaps the weakest Anglican establishment in North America. Two of the last three royal governors “were the only royal governors of North Carolina who showed much zeal for the promotion of religion.” Due to the efforts of these two governors—Arthur Dobbs