Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1995 Religion in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Virginia: Myth, Persuasion, and the Creation of an American Identity. Edward Lawrence Bond Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Bond, Edward Lawrence, "Religion in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Virginia: Myth, Persuasion, and the Creation of an American Identity." (1995). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5943. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5943 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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RELIGION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ANGLICAN VIRGINIA: MYTH, PERSUASION, AND THE CREATION OF AN AMERICAN IDENTITY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Edward Lawrence Bond B.A., College of William and Mary, 1983 M.A., University of Chicago, 1985 May 1995 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9538723 Copyright 1995 by Bond, Edward Lawrence All rights reserved. DMI Microform 9538723 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ®Copyright 1995 Edward Lawrence Bond All rights reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people to thank for offering me assistance, guidance, criticism, and support while I researched and wrote my dissertation. Charles Royster's blend of criticism and encouragement was very important, and I am also grateful for the freedom he allowed me in organizing the dissertation. Despite no longer teaching at LSU, Edward Muir offered perceptive readings of several chapters. Warren Billings likewise offered advice about chapter seven. Gaines Foster, Paul Paskoff, Ellis Sandoz, James Morris, and Anne Loveland also gave me advice and encouragement throughout the project. Most of the research was done at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library. There John Ingram, Susan Berg, Gail Greve, Del Moore, Liz Ackert, George Yetter, and Lois Danuser helped me various questions related to my research. John Ingram was especially helpful in guiding me through the mysteries of the Virginia Colonial Records Project. Kathleen Jenkins also read and commented on several chapters and, like my parents, offered encouragement. Her friendship has been important to me throughout my years at LSU. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................... iii ABSTRACT..................................................... V CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.......................................1 2. THE RELIGIOUS JOURNEYS OF A COLONIAL VIRGINIA: TENSIONS AND STRUCTURES IN THE COLONY'S RELIGIOUS LIFE.................................... 7 3. ENGLAND, GOD, AND EARLY VIRGINIA: THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT OF A NATIONAL MISSION 40 God's Friends.................................... 40 English Mythic Religion............ 42 More About God's Friends........................ 70 Defining the Missions........................... 72 4. ENGLISH MISSIONS IN VIRGINIA: POSSESSING THE LAND AND DEMONIZING THE NATIVES............... 101 5. BUILDING A POLITY: EARLY VIRGINIA AND THE GOD OF THE FATHERS..................................138 6. VIRGINIA'S RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT, 1607-1660: TOLERATION AND TOBACCO......................... 177 7 . THE RELIGION OF ANGLICANS IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, 1660-1730....................................... 228 8. FROM MYTH TO PERSUASION........................ 291 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................... 315 VITA.................................................. 336 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This work examines the religious thought and the function of religion in colonial Virginia from first settlement to approximately 1725 by looking at the religious aspects of England's missions to the New World, the neglect and subsequent collapse of these missions, and the creation by Virginians of an Anglican religious establishment possessed of a self-identity different from that of the Church of England in the mother country. Virginia began as an extension of England into the world, a part of the English nation which, in its religious aspects, was shaped by the mythic idea that true Englishmen were Protestants. Virginia, however, proved to be an intellectual as well as a geographic space, and the colonists soon discovered that they were defined more by place and ethnicity than by European definitions of religious homogeneity. A Virginia myth, conditioned by the North American continent and its native peoples, emerged. This myth suggested that all Europeans were Christian when defined against the savagery of the land's natives. By the end of the eighteenth century, this myth had collapsed as well, and Virginians were openly accepting religion as a private persuasion rather than as a public possession. Place rather than ideology came to shape Virginians' understanding of their religious identity. While they v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. readily accepted and participated in the Restoration Church of England's revival of its Catholic roots, Virginians had created different ways of organizing religion in the colony, and they reacted against English attempts to weaken their vestries or otherwise threaten Virginians' ways of structuring their Church. A large part of their religious identity emerged from the religious structures and practices that had emerged in response to the environmental exigencies of a new continent. For Virginians, this became part of their identity. Their identity as Virginians rather than as English people living in the colony first emerged out of their religious rather than their political worldview. In religious terms, the colony had begun as an extension of English religion into the world, but through English neglect and their own response to the continent, Virginians created a substantially different institution. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Historians have unduly neglected the religious life of Virginia's established church in the seventeenth century, concentrating instead on the Great Awakening and the rise of the evangelicals in Virginia in the eighteenth century. Religion is often seen as peripheral to the main themes of Virginia's colonial history, becoming important only after 1740 when dissenters emerged in opposition to the Anglican Church. It is well known that the Church of England was weak in Virginia and that it suffered a chronic shortage of ministers throughout the colonial period. Yet that does not also mean that religion was unimportant to professing Anglicans who lived there. Religion, in fact, continued to play an important role in Virginia, although it often lacked the outward fervor of that professed by the Puritans