Chapter 4 : Roanoke 's Christian Church

In the 1800s a Market Revolution began, changing the way in which America operated and in the midst of all that was a Second Great Awakening, causing people to once again, question their religious beliefs and practices. Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz tell the story of Robert Matthews, or the Prophet Matthias and his followers. Matthias had an unconventional childhood, he became an orphan at a young age and was raised by church elders. He worked under one of the elders to learn the carpenter’s craft. He easily found work but had trouble keeping it because he was always preaching at his fellow workers about their sinful ways. Matthias was eager to make good but continually fell into misfortunes, “which led him on a prolonged and erratic religious journey” (49). The Kingdom of Matthias gained and lost members, had changes in beliefs, and was full of ever changing marriages. Although looking back on it now, Matthias’s messages and beliefs seem almost laughable, but at they time his followers found his message, ministry, and lifestyle very compelling.

The Second Great Awakening laid the foundations of the development of present-day religious beliefs and establishments, moral views, and democratic ideals in the United States. Beginning back in late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century,1 this Protestant awakening sought to reach out the un-churched and bring people to a much more personal and vivid experience of Christianity. Starting on the Southern frontier and soon spreading to the Northeast, the Second Great Awakening has also been associated as a response against the growing liberalism in religion - skepticism, deism, and rational Christianity.2 Although the movement is well-known to be

According to Hinks, Methodists were usually more willing to place “the powerful God of Christianity… on the side of social and political justice.” One religious message that Walker conveys through this Appeal that supports this claim, was

To Stoddard, the idea of “fostering conversions was more important than discovering a perfect church order, and in that attitude he blazed the way for the most influential practice in American religious history: he was the first American to make periodic revivals a centerpiece of his ministry” . Every decade his congregation would experience an “awakening” in which many people were moved spiritually and often lead to conversion. Some of these revivals even made it past Northampton and into the neighboring communities, directly impacting young Edwards and his family, for Edwards’s father rejected the half-way covenant but endorsed revival. These disagreements divided his family and remained unresolved for decades .

Located in the heart of downtown Cedar Rapids this Historical brick building with its’ decorative molding and beautiful stain glass windows is the home of a subculture of biblically based Christians. This church family meets every Sunday like many churches who revere Sunday as being the Lord’s day, set aside for rest and worship of God. Biblically based Christianity is a vast culture of faith in God carried out by many subcultures called churches, made up of people who seek to worship God and to foster a personal relationship with him. One of the most important things that make a subculture is a question of what is it that brings these people together? This foundational question is not only the question of the subculture, but is also the defining

By the middle of the 1700’s, a significant organization took place. From New England to Georgia, different groups of Baptists began to form churches. They had only one doctrinal requirement that united them, i.e., the believer’s baptism by full immersion in water; also, Baptists then had different theological doctrinal beliefs. Notwithstanding, in the 1700’s, Baptist leaders sought to unify and homogenize the Baptist theology; they founded colleges and formed associations. However, the cause of “religious liberty,” was also a unanimous and significant characteristic that united the majority of Baptists. Their participation within their communities distinguished from other denominations. The Baptists were not contending for tolerance but for absolute “religious liberty.” Theirs demand was not for their right only but for the right of all dissenters and non-conformists as well. Some historians affirm that religious liberty in America was accomplished due to the diligence of the American Baptist, which now is proven to be the greatest contribution to American science and statecraft.”11

One of the most important factors to consider is that during the 1690’s the church of Salem Village was conflicted about being too conservative, which caused a divide in the congregation. This division lead to social and political issues between the two groups. This rift resulted in presumably innocent people being accused of witchcraft. In 1689, Samuel Parris was invited by the Salem Village church committee to take over church services after the dismissal of George Burroughs. This was not the first time that a minister had been fired from the Salem Village church. Anthony Brandt deliberates a theological shift which occurred in the Salem Village in his piece “An Unholy Mess”. He writes the congregation had been in dispute over on whether they should become more like the progressive Half-Way Covenant, such as the church in Salem Town. This new theological approach would offer more community members a chance to become church members and would do away with the strict Calvinistic view of the “visible saints”. The concept of “visible saints” decreed that only certain members of the church were guaranteed entrance into heaven, could participate in Communion, and they sat special seating at service. Samuel Parris was a firm Calvinist Puritan and had no desire to see the church make such a reformist change. Parris in fact used this division to create a social divide among the four hundred villagers who had not been allowed membership into to the church or to be baptized. He

Between 1820 and 1860, Americans constructed 40,000 new churches compared to the 10,000 they constructed in the 40 years before 1820. At the end of the revival period, ”one-third of all Americans attended church regularly.”(P.400) Many of the early revival preachers embraced Christian evangelicalism, the established groups sought to take advantage of the popular enthusiasm to build their particular denominations. Methodists and the Baptists established themselves as leading American denominations as a result of the Second Great Awakening. The two faiths had a mutual sense of affinity with regard to doctrine, but the Baptists created a radically decentralized hierarchy that empowered local ministers and individual churches.

First Baptist of Pontotoc, Mississippi, is a hundred and forty-six year old church that is full of history. This paper will provide a brief background of the church history. Over the last four years, three immoral staff members of First Baptist Church of Pontotoc have been contributing factors to the church 's decline.

I sat down at my kitchen table with Michael Bruxvoort, a friend and fellow Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on October 25th, 2015. We laughed and talked about his journey through life and all the memories, obstacles and pleasures along the way. Among the many topics we spoke about, the ones that seemed most relevant to him and myself were: the family dynamics of religion within his household, his process of religion through secular spaces and lastly, his transition to Chapel Hill, NC and making it his home. Our conversation through Michael 's life shows how his faith has shaped him to be the man he is today. Through this paper, I will explain and analyze these topics in hopes of better understanding geographies of religion.

Butler, J. (2007). . In New Worl Faiths: Religion in Colonial America. [ebrary book]. Retrieved from http://lrps>wgu.edu/provision/17908228

23. Great Awakening – a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America

Existing in this book are fifteen essays, all written by Flynt, and all are relative to the South, religion, and diversity. His essays review southern history, politics, southern regionalism, evangelicalism, traditionalism, fundamentalism, social history, labor history, two case studies; one on the Southern Baptists in Appalachia and of modernization and community; the second one of twentieth-century politics and religion in Florida. Asserts the complexity of social issues and the reforms Baptists felt were necessary to change. He expounds a minister’s battle within a church to not display the American flag because of the death involved behind it and to not be willing for his church life to be separated from his personal convictions. Flynt

The Making of the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. A. J. Smith Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008.

advances from the 1870s to the 1910s to try and understand why most church leaders could say “Without blushing or winking” that the twentieth would be “the Christian century” (16). It seemed like it was not