Date Thesis Awarded
5-2024
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
History
Advisor
Paul Mapp
Committee Members
Alexander Angelov
Nicholas Popper
Abstract
This paper analyzes the controversies and confrontations that emerged between the established Church of England in the colony of Virginia and the evangelical New Light Presbyterians who challenged the colonial authorities' definition of religious toleration. The paper first identifies the social, intellectual, and cultural problems inherited by the colonial church based on the problem of church-state integration in the context of growing multi-denominational landscape of competing dissenting groups. The factors of frontier violence and immigration are also taken into account to stress the role of patterns of social dislocation that undermined the authority of British institutions like the national church. Finally, it argues that the transition of the Hanover Revival from a lay movement to a network of Presbyterian congregations through Samuel Davies' ministry as an itinerant pastor helped expand the preexisting legal application of the Act of Toleration, contributing to an ambiguous field of contested boundaries that would characterize the established church in Virginia for the rest of its duration.
Recommended Citation
Dale, John, "Reverend Sirs: The Hanover Revival and the Contested Boundaries of Religious Authority and Itinerant Dissent in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia, 1720 - 1763" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2129.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2129
