Black says early revival styles tied to country's changes

Contrary to popular belief, religious revival meetings in the South in the late 1700s and early 1800s weren't all shake, rattle and roll.

Dr. Daryl Black, executive director of the Chattanooga History Center, said the style of a group in eastern middle Georgia, in fact, was more of an anti-revival revival. The same group, he said, eventually founded the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, Ga., in 1845.

Revival styles of the era, the subject of which were his master's degree thesis and doctoral dissertation, was the topic of his talk at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library earlier this week. The talk was titled "Moved to Profound Silence: Religious Revival Styles in Tennessee and Georgia Between 1790 and 1805."

In northern Tennessee and South Central Kentucky, he said, religious revivals elicited the reaction that has been suggested as typical of such events, Dr. Black said.

"There was great emotion, falling down, what was called 'the jerks' and what was known as 'treeing the devil,' " he said.

According to documents he discovered in the Huntington College library, though, people in the fast growing Georgia Baptist group, "rather than outburst, spoke in somber reflection and had a silent engagement with things spiritual."

The larger point, according to Dr. Black, is that they were exhibiting a cultural style that ran counter to the rising tide of democracy in the country.

For that group, he said, such emotional reactions -- from the likes of the poor, women and blacks -- were a threat to the natural order. They lived, after all, in the middle of the state's cotton belt and were largely slave owners.

The group's more measured reactions, Dr. Black said, were a "resistance to the breaking down of social hierarchies."