Scott W. Owens
Christians from the South
Tue Jul 10 15:24:14 2001


Alan:

Your idea that religious activity and church membership were perhaps local or regional is I believe pretty accurate. Remember that the "Deep South" was still frontier into the 1840's and establishment of churches only began late in that decade, for many places. My own research in antebellum Pleasant Ridge in Greene County, however, suggests that by 1860, the community of less than 100 white inhabitants supported at least two churches. A Baptist church existed at least from the 1840's: my GGGgrandfather, Jesse Horton, who died in 1850, is described on his tombstone that "for the last 30 years of his life, he was a faithful member of the Baptist church." Since he came to Pleasant Ridge from Wake County, NC in 1824, and he had be faithful since at least 1820, there must have been some Baptist congregation in Pleasant Ridge from near that time. Also, the Presbyterian church, est 1848, met in a home until 1859 when a Neo-classical churchhouse was built on land "next to the Baptist Church." (Session minutes) In the late 1850's when the church secured a perminant pastor, the congregation grew substantially, including at least twenty young men (including one of Jesse Horton's grandsons) who would later enter CSA service, and some ten did not return. Further, this little church provided two chaplains for the Confederacy, William Kennedy for the 11th Alabama Inf in the Army of NOrthern Virginia, and the pastor James P. McMullen for the 42nd Alabama INf in the Army of Tennessee. Mr. McMullen was KIA at the battle of Resaca, GA in 1864, as was his son.

Examples of church discipline found in the session minutes finds the elders dealing with public drunkeness on board a Tombigbee River steamboat. Miles Horton (very distant relation) confessed to indulging in "spiritous liquors" and vowed not to do so again. He remained in good standing in the church.

Rolls of the church, compared with the 1860 Census, suggest that at least half the community were members of this congregation. Some proportion of the balance no doubt followed the Baptist persuation. I am impressed, and my experience growing up in the same place in the 1960's and 1970's, was that church attendance was nearly universal in this particular community. Colored attendance was noteworthy both before and after the War. This segment of the community segregated themselves into their own churches only after the end of Reconstruction (session minutes).

The Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian Church exists to this day, meeting in the same antebellum churchhouse (though it now has central air and heat, and only recently got running water). The Baptists stopped meeting in the late 1800's. However, a Methodist congregation shared the churhhouse of the Presbyterians for a while in the postbellum period. Still, in the late 1800's this little community supported three congregations.

I am sure that the degree of religion practiced in any particular antebellum locality depended much on who settled there. Quite obviously there were rougher areas where piety was not revered. But I would tend to agree that the wartime revivals contributed to a wider practice of religion after the War than may have existed in the antebellum times. Of course, relative prosperity and poverty of the two periods may have attended this result as well.