Religion in Antebellum Kentucky

By John B. Boles

A look at the Christian religions in the Bluegrass State before the Civil War from the author of the acclaimed Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty.

Religion permeated the day-to-day life of antebellum Kentucky. This engaging account of Kentucky’s various Christian denominations, first published as part of the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf, traces the history of the Great Revival of 1800–1805, the subsequent schism in Protestant ranks, the rise of Catholicism, the development of a distinctive black Christianity, and the growth of a Christian antislavery tradition.

Paying special attention to the role of religion in the everyday life of early Kentuckians and their heritage, John B. Boles provides a concise yet enlightening introduction to the faith and the people of the Bluegrass State. Religion in Antebellum Kentucky is an excellent survey of religion and its significance in the first eighty-five years of Kentucky’s history.

“A small historical gem . . . Boles has set an admirable standard of excellence for this sort of study.” —William and Mary Quarterly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780813183107

Book preview

Preface

THIS BRIEF BOOK is an introduction to the religious history of antebellum Kentucky, though I have tried to place the account within the context of southern history in general. Because of severe limitations of space, I have discussed only those religious groups sizable enough to have a significant impact on Kentucky. For example, even though Louis Brandeis was born in Louisville in 1856, the Jewish community there was too limited in size to merit treatment. On the other hand, I have tried to go beyond mere narrative and be interpretative when the material and my ability permitted. The result, I hope, will be useful both to the general reader and more specialized students of religion and the South. A longer, footnoted typescript of the book is deposited at the Maryland Historical Society.

Even in a short book an author incurs numerous debts. My colleagues and students have offered encouragement, and all those with heavy teaching loads know how important that can be. Several scholars have read individual chapters, and to them I express sincere appreciation: the Reverend Vincent Eaton, Philip Gleason, the Reverend Vincent P. McMurry, and Willie Lee Rose. Chapter 5 was presented at the Homewood Seminar in American Religious History at the Johns Hopkins University; I am indebted to Timothy L. Smith for giving me this valuable opportunity. The library staffs of the Maryland Historical Society and Towson State College were unfailingly cooperative. Moreover, a grant from the college expedited the early research. Mary Bowersox expertly typed the manuscript. My wife, Nancy, was invaluable, reading each draft several times and insisting upon clarity of expression. She also helped with that most dreary of tasks, proofreading. Our son David, to whom the book is dedicated, was a joyful distraction throughout the entire process of research and writing.

Preface to Paperback Edition

Rereading this book some twenty years after writing it, I was surprised to see how little I would have liked to change. Were I to write it now, I would, as is the current academic fashion, make my interpretive scaffolding more explicit. In my 1976 account of why the South’s Great Awakening did not take place in the 1740s along with that in New England and the Middle Atlantic colonies, but instead occurred in 1800 as the Great Revival, I assumed that the analysis was implicit in the narrative. If I were writing in this age when restaurants omit their ceiling tile to reveal the air conditioning ducts, the electrical conduits, and the plumbing, all of which are often painted bright colors, I would have first said that there are at least three prerequisites to such an awakening. There must be in place a shared belief system about how God works in history vis-á-vis salvation, a network of churches and ministers, and a society undergoing a wrenching process of change perceived by contemporaries as a period of crisis and by ministers and devout lay persons as susceptible only to a religious solution. That said, I would retain my original account of the coming of the revival in Kentucky.

Another change—if I were writing the book now—would appear in my description of slave religion. I did attempt to show the meaning for slaves of their participation in the mostly biracial churches, but I wish I had written more about the impact of their presence on the whites. Not only did the very genuine Christianity of the slaves cause whites subtly to ameliorate their treatment of blacks—they came to be treated more as a race of permanent children (humans, that is) than as a race of beasts of burden, a slight change, perhaps, but one of real significance—but the presence of devout slaves in the churches led evangelicals to shift slowly away from condemning the institution of slavery. Instead, they began to see it as the divine process by which the heathen of Africa were introduced to the saving gospel. In this way the members of the evangelical churches, who in the eighteenth century often had been forthright critics of slavery, ironically became its foremost defenders by the late antebellum period. This was part of the reason many evangelical ministers advocated secession, defended the Confederacy, and after defeat often sacralized the Lost Cause.

A third major change I would make would be to emphasize the role of women in the evangelical churches. In many ways the quintessential figures in the early history of the Baptist and Methodist churches were not the itinerant ministers but the devout women who made up substantially over half the membership. The ministers usually found the women to be the most eager listeners, the most pious converts, the most willing workers. Women found in the churches an opportunity for leadership, for participation in the life of the community, for growth in self-respect.

I originally dedicated the book to my first son, at the writing a babe in arms. This year David Christopher Boles graduates from college, and I rededicate the book to him.

John B. Boles

March 1995

1

THE PLANTING

THE DARK AND BLOODY GROUND was the Indian name for that beautiful territory which began in mountains on the western edge of Virginia, gently sloped west, and declined to the Mississippi River. For countless moons Cherokees and Iroquois battled incessantly for the land, giving the region its martial name. The same qualities of fertility and abundant game that attracted the Indians also caught the attention of the competing French and English, and for almost a century after LaSalle discovered the falls near present-day Louisville in 1669, the two European rivals cast longing eyes at Kentucky. Two years later a party of Virginians sent west by their governor, Sir William Berkeley, traversed the region. But then for almost eighty years, except for anonymous trappers and possibly Indian kidnap victims (and a French explorer who happened upon Big Bone Lick in 1739), no Europeans vied for the land. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Celeron de Bienville in 1749 visited the future state and even buried lead plates to assure the legitimacy of France’s claim, but it was the arrival the following year of Dr. Thomas Walker and Christopher Gist, coming separately and for different land companies in the English colonies, that began the onrush of English-American exploration and eventually settlement. From their travels grandiose tales of the land west of the mountains emerged, and soon other adventurers caught the fever. John Findley’s descriptions seized the fancy of Daniel Boone, and the western urge never left him. After Boone’s celebrated travels opened new vistas for American pioneers already heady with visions of luxuriant soils and forests crowded with deer, the great American trek westward began in earnest. Kentucky was to be the first state carved out of the wilderness west of the Appalachians.

John Filson, one of Kentucky’s most famous publicists, described the region in 1784 as the most extraordinary country that the sun enlightens with his celestial beams, and in an Appendix to his Kentucke he introduced colonial readers to Col. Daniel Boon. Boone’s narrative, refracted no doubt through the promotional prose of Filson, portrayed with feigned amazement: Thus we behold Kentucke, lately an howling wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a fruitful field. Extravagant praise of the new territory trickled back to avid listeners in Virginia especially. Who would not be eager to brave the rigors of the distance, pass through that wonderful natural gateway, the Cumberland Gap, and behold a better tomorrow? And even in that new land toward the sunset, the comforting and civilizing forces of religion would be felt. As Boone himself rhapsodized, Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent, where the horrid yells of savages, and the groans of the distressed, sounded in our ears, we now hear the praises and adorations of our Creator.

Kentucky entered the Union in 1792 as the fifteenth state, but for two decades rival land companies, led by trailblazers and would-be impresarios, had laid claim to Bluegrass empires. James Harrod in early 1774 built cabins and later a fort; thus at Harrodsburg began the first permanent white settlement in Kentucky. The following year Judge Richard Henderson, dreaming imperial dreams as head of the Transylvania Company, called delegates from the then four Kentucky settlements to meet together near a fort that Daniel Boone was completing by the Kentucky River—eventually the town of Boonesborough. The delegates assembled, and because there was no building to hold them, they met in a small meadow bordering a stream called Spring Link, which opened into the Kentucky River. This historic plain, then covered with a blanket of white clover, had in its center a huge elm tree whose circumference of shade Judge Henderson estimated to be 400 feet. Under the canopy of foliage was organized, May 23-27, 1775, the proprietary government for the proposed Transylvania Colony. One of the Harrodsburg delegates was an Anglican minister, the Reverend John Lyth, and on May 28, the Sunday following the establishment of the trans-Appalachian government, beneath the arms of that majestic elm tree, the first public service of worship was held in Kentucky. In the shade of the church tree were heard prayers for England’s most gracious sovereign Lord King George. The American Revolution soon ended prayers for royalty, but at least a portion of Daniel Boone’s prophecy turns out to be true: on the frontier now sounded the praises and adorations of our Creator.

From this auspicious beginning, one might have expected substantial Anglican or Episcopal growth, but history is unpredictable. In a state whose early queen city was named after the revolutionary battle at Lexington, the Church of England had an unpopular tradition to overcome. Consequently the stately Church of England made but faltering progress in the new frontier state. The Episcopal church had more than its Tory reputation to live down. During the Revolution the denomination almost folded, and after the war the disorganized group was so preoccupied with trying to establish a new ecclesiastical structure that it simply could not concern itself with missions in Kentucky. Finally in 1789 the Diocese of Maryland sent word that one of its sons, the Reverend William Duke, was emigrating to the Bluegrass. Illness struck Duke, however, near Harper’s Ferry, and he returned to an active clerical career in Maryland.

Certainly there were individuals scattered across the varied terrain of Kentucky who identified themselves as Episcopalian, but for these adherents there was no church. In the vicinity of Lexington in the early 1790s a group of such citizens, calling themselves the Episcopal Society, met for informal services at a nearby farm. In their midst was a young Presbyterian graduate from Washington College in Virginia, James Moore, who taught classics at the local Transylvania Seminary. Moore intended to wear the cloth as a Presbyterian, but his independence of views and steadfast refusal to withdraw sections of two sermons preached as part of his ordination examination caused the synod to dismiss him. Dismayed yet not persuaded to modify his beliefs, young Moore adamantly pursued the ministry. Meeting the Episcopal Society in Lexington, he was pleasantly surprised to discover their religious views were compatible with his. Moreover, they were impressed with him. Consequently Moore returned to Virginia, was ordained by Bishop James Madison, and in 1794 returned to Lexington as an Episcopal minister. Two years later an Episcopal church was organized in Lexington in a ramshackle frame house on the site of the present-day Christ Church.

As so often was the case, Moore had a strong commitment to education, and after his church was under way he accepted two part-time academic positions, the presidency of Kentucky Academy in Pisgah, eight miles southwest of Lexington, and of Transylvania Seminary in Lexington. When these two institutions merged in 1799 to become Transylvania University, Moore became its president and professor of logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and belles-lettres. Even with heavy teaching and administrative duties Moore continued as rector of his growing church. Such multiple responsibilities were burdensome and gave the rector no time to spread his faith beyond Lexington. He and his congregation sent pleading letters to several of the eastern bishops, and again it was the Diocese of Maryland, not Virginia, who recognized the need. Bishop Thomas Clagget promptly commissioned the Reverend Samuel Keene, Jr., a missionary to Kentucky.

For nine months Keene was stationed in Lexington and with Christian zeal and joy preached the Episcopal message in the neighboring towns, especially Georgetown, Winchester, and Paris, helping to organize scattered small congregations. Near Lexington, Keene met an able young Methodist itinerant, the Reverend Williams Kavanaugh, whom he persuaded to take Episcopal orders. Since the Methodist church had been separate from the Episcopal only fifteen years, this required no great theological readjustment, and Kavanaugh went to Baltimore, was examined, and on June 20, 1800, became an ordained Episcopal priest. Returning to Lexington, Kavanaugh served as James Moore’s assistant while Moore was laying the educational foundations for Transylvania’s brief greatness as a university. With the close of the century, the Episcopal church finally had a sure toehold in Kentucky, but it was only a toehold. Not until 1820, when George Thomas Chapman was named rector of the parish in Lexington, did the Episcopal faith come of age in Kentucky.

Although there had long been a variety of Baptists in the South, the denomination really took root after 1755 when Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall emigrated from Connecticut to North Carolina, carrying with them their fervent and evangelical Separate Baptist faith. By the 1760s Separate Baptist churches were sparking great Baptist growth in both North Carolina and Virginia despite persecution from the established Church of England. At this time the various kinds of Baptists—Particular (believing in strict Calvinism and adhering to the Philadelphia Confession of Faith), General (believing salvation was open to everyone who desires it), and Separate (evangelical, Calvinistic, but accepting