Feature
Virginia's Revival Fire
The Story of One Culture's Spiritual Rise from the Literal Ashes by Meredith Henne Baker
Today, we know the commonwealth of Virginia as a firm link in the Bible Belt, studded with Evangelical churches and Christian colleges. Driving through country routes, one sees a sign every few miles indicating a turn down a winding road to a New Fork Baptist Church, St. Luke's Episcopal, or Mt. Comfort Methodist. It is easy to assume that things have always been this way, that Christian institutions—particularly those of an Evangelical stripe— have always surrounded and engaged Virginians.
This is not, however, the case; the real history of the state and its churches proves to be more complicated—and interesting.
Why Moore Came to Richmond
We might begin the story of Virginia's transformation in 1814, with the recent arrival of a Yankee minister to Richmond, the state capital.
Rev. Dr. Richard Channing Moore, a native New Yorker, had originally been a physician, but after being converted at a barber shop, he became a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church.
In 1814, he agreed to leave his burgeoning parish in New York City at the urging of a handful of Virginia's Evangelical Episcopal priests, who spied a rare opportunity to evangelize the unchurched (or under-churched) of their southern state. Once in Virginia, Moore was ordained Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia—an unpaid and thankless position. To pay the bills, he also served as rector of Richmond's new Monumental Church, built in memory of the victims of the devastating Richmond Theater fire in December 1811.
Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., as well as of several landmark federal buildings, had designed the domed, avant-garde Monumental Church. It sat on Broad Street, on the very site of the burned-down theater, and above the mass grave where the fire's 72 victims were buried. In 1812, while the church was still under construction, Mills noted to Sarah Zane in Philadelphia,
I trust that God will send laborers into his vineyard. . . . God is able out of evil to bring forth good. I humbly pray, that the awful visitation with which he has visited R[ichmond] may redound to his glory in the salvation of all its inhabitants.
In the months following the fire, the injured had their shattered bones set and their burns treated with concoctions of turpentine and vinegar. Their emotional pain, however, was more difficult to overcome: some grieving survivors attempted suicide; others packed their bags and left the city for good; some became recluses.
Hoping to find meaning in the disaster and healing for their broken hearts, many Richmonders also clamored into churches. In May of 1812, Rev. John Holt Rice reported that "not less than five hundred went away from the Mason's Hall (where I preached,) unable to find seats. A spirit of reading, and of inquiry for religious truth, is spreading rapidly among our town folks."
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