A Blessed Company

496 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 12 illus., 6 tables, 3 maps, appends., notes, index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-1497-7
Published: March 2014
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-7510-0
Published: January 2003
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-7133-6
Published: January 2003

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In this book, John Nelson reconstructs everyday Anglican religious practice and experience in Virginia from the end of the seventeenth century to the start of the American Revolution. Challenging previous characterizations of the colonial Anglican establishment as weak, he reveals the fundamental role the church played in the political, social, and economic as well as the spiritual lives of its parishioners.

Drawing on extensive research in parish and county records and other primary sources, Nelson describes Anglican Virginia's parish system, its parsons, its rituals of worship and rites of passage, and its parishioners' varied relationships to the church. All colonial Virginians--men and women, rich and poor, young and old, planters and merchants, servants and slaves, dissenters and freethinkers--belonged to a parish. As such, they were subject to its levies, its authority over marriage, and other social and economic dictates. In addition to its religious functions, the parish provided essential care for the poor, collaborated with the courts to handle civil disputes, and exerted its influence over many other aspects of community life.

A Blessed Company demonstrates that, by creatively adapting Anglican parish organization and the language, forms, and modes of Anglican spirituality to the Chesapeake's distinctive environmental and human conditions, colonial Virginians sustained a remarkably effective and faithful Anglican church in the Old Dominion.

About the Author

John K. Nelson is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For more information about John K. Nelson, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"This perceptive study makes clear that Virginia's Anglican Church was at the core of the Old Dominion's identity. . . . A masterful work."--American Historical Review

"A useful examination of 'the everyday context' of colonial Virginian Anglicanism as ordinary people lived it in their communities, churches, and homes. . . . Well written and well documented. . . . Readers seeking to form a more complete picture of the spiritual life of eighteenth-century Virginia will enjoy this book. So will those looking for a good reference on the everyday details of period Anglicanism."--North Carolina Historical Review

"No one has written a better study of Anglican--or, more broadly, Christian--practice in colonial Virginia. This book now becomes the standard account of its topic, the indispensable study for future generations of historians interested in colonial religion."--Journal of American History

"Nelson has produced the most significant book on Anglicanism in colonial Virginia since George MacLaren Brydon published his two volumes fifty years ago. This beautifully written, revisionist study will force historians to rethink the shape of colonial religion and Anglican development."--Catholic Historical Review

"A Blessed Company will stand for many years as an exemplary interpretation of Anglican religion in eighteenth-century Virginia."--William and Mary Quarterly

"Based on extensive and intensive analysis of parish and county records, as well as an extraordinarily thorough study of literary sources including sermons, correspondence, and legislation, Nelson's volume carries the study of the colonial Virginia Church of England as an institution to a new level."--Anglican and Episcopal History