The early nineteenth century camp-meeting revivals impacted how Americans understood the separation of church and state. This concept was a political innovation, added to the Constitution because of the insistence of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The model for the First Amendment was the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom which became the legal definition of religious freedom in the United States. It reads:                 “We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact [Be it enacted by the General Assembly] that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that...

 The early nineteenth century camp meetings drew so many people that it was impossible for one or two preachers to meet the spiritual and practical demands for preaching, exhortation and ministry. While the location might be associated with a particular denomination (the Cane Ridge Meeting House was Presbyterian, for example), preachers and lay-ministers from every denomination in attendance were pressed into service. This cross-denominational cooperation and collaboration is one of the characteristics that made the revivals so contagious, in my opinion. Even women were exhorters. Of course, this was an unheard of practice in the days where men and women sat in different sections of a church and where women were not invited nor expected to preach to or to teach men. Women exhorters were protested but one preacher retorted to the critic this way, as recorded in A.P. Mead's 1860 history of the camp meeting revivals, Manna In The Wilderness: " You think women are proper teachers ...

  One of the social impacts of the early nineteenth century revival camp-meeting movement was to change the way Americans thought about childhood. Prior to 1800, according to Karen Calvert, “Childhood had no positive attributes of its own worthy of expression. A child was merely an adult in the making, and childhood, as a period of physical and spiritual vulnerability was a deficiency   to be overcome.” [1] By 1800, more than half (55.2%) of the people living on the Kentucky frontier were children under the age of 16. This compares to 49% for the rest of the new United States, according to Ted A. Smith. [2] So, many younger people would have been present at the camp meetings. When children began to respond spiritually, this was unprecedented and unusual. Children as young as five were recorded to have addressed adults at these camp meetings, standing on benches, tree branches and from the shoulders of adults. Their religious exhortations were taken seriously both by other ch...

  Over the next several weeks, this blog will feature posts about the early nineteenth century camp meetings such as the Cane Ridge Revival [1] in Bourbon County Kentucky which happened in August 1801. It was organized and promoted over several months as a Presbyterian celebration of Holy Communion. While Holy Communion remains a very important ordinance in every modern Christian denomination and church, it is usually embedded in a regular congregational meeting, taking no more than about 30 minutes. This was not the case with eighteenth and early nineteenth century Presbyterians. Consistent with the traditions brought to the United States by Scottish Presbyterians, Communion took at least three days. First the prospective participants were required to prove that they were spiritually qualified to receive the bread and wine that represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The next day was for the actual sacramental meal. The third day was given to praise and thanks to God for ...

  When world history teachers introduce the Christian religion to students, it is often as a cultural factor in the transition from the ancient era to the Enlightenment. Rarely do the textbooks present Christianity as a religion that, from the beginning, has had a global aspiration because of Jesus’ instruction to His disciples to go into all the world, teaching, making disciples and baptizing. Perhaps it is assumed that the students already understand this missional objective. Much of Western history, from the Crusades to the colonialization of the Americas and the exploration of Africa can be contextualized as an expansion and defense of Christianity. This has often included actions and dogmas that are inconsistent with the core tenets of the faith even though, in many cases, the words of the Bible have been extracted to strengthen the resolve of the religious activists. Andrew Walls wrote that “Christian history may be seen as a succession of cross-cultural movements” [1] sta...

  The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education project published the first four high-interest, easy-reader chapter books in its Famous Kentucky Christians Club (FKCC for short) Series in August 2020, making them available for sale on Amazon. They are examples of historical fiction written at a second through fourth grade reading level that are appropriate for elementary and middle school students. Our plan is to release the books in sets of four where one is about a white man, one about a black man, one about a white woman and one about a black woman – with Hispanic and other minority men and women included as we discover their stories. Each book treats the Christian religion factually, using secular, objective, and non-devotional language without minimizing the extent to which the famous Kentuckian valued, prioritized and represented that faith. Each enjoyable plot that follows the same pattern. There is a state competition for fourth grade students. Each book is about the ...

Women are often left under-acknowledged in the historical record. African American women are even less likely to be named. It is our commitment here at the Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project to honor the contributions of past Kentucky Christians including men, women, whites, blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, and others. It takes a lot of work to find documented evidence of their existence and of how they explained the importance of their faith to their lives and work. An example of the minimal mention given to Dinah Durrett in the written record is the subject of this blog. Peter Durrett organized the first two African American churches in Kentucky beginning in 1808. His was the second African American church in the United States, an oddity given that Kentucky is a southern state and that Durrett was enslaved. His nickname was Old Captain. He emigrated to Kentucky in 1781 with the Traveling Church, a pilgrimage of some 500 Baptists from Spottsylvania, Virgina....