Great Awakening books available at MC libraries

Jean Rhame has graciously purchased and donated two books to the Middlesex County Public Library (MCPL) system. She is a member of the board of directors of the Middlesex County Museum and Historical Society. The books were mentioned in the society’s October on-line presentation about the Great Awakening in Middlesex County. The Great Awakening is a name that historians have given to the mid-18th century religious revival that swept the American colonies and most nations of the world with significant Protestant populations.

One of the books, Jewel L. Spangler’s “Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century,” notes the role that Middlesex County played in the Awakening in Virginia. Some Presbyterians, some colonial Anglicans (modern day Episcopalians), and most members of the Methodist societies (a group within the Anglican Church until organization as a separate denomination in 1784) were supportive of the Great Awakening, but almost all Baptists were. Practically non-existent in Virginia prior to the Awakening, Baptist congregations were initially formed in the Shenandoah Valley…