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Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism
Winner of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History, Holy Fairs traces the roots of American camp-meeting revivalism to the communion festivals of early modern Scotland. This new paperback edition of Leigh Eric S
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 18, 2026
This book is a fascinating historical dive into the practice of communion seasons in Scotland. Leigh Schmidt isn't necessarily looking at Biblical arguments for why or why not to have communion seasons, but is examining the historical practice of it and arguing that such seasons are directly tied to the evangelical tent meeting revivals that were so well known in the Americas. Schmidt is quite balanced in his handling of the blessings, as well as the excesses of these holy fairs. Fascinatingly, it seems that communion seasons were as much about converting unbelievers as they were about building up believers.
Schmidt argues that communion seasons were not really a question about frequency, but actually more about festivity. He argues that medieval Scotland held annual communion but then the Reformers tried to unsuccessfully bring about monthly communion (in an attempt to move away from superstition around the eucharist). He argues briefly that this was one reason that the Westminster Directory for Worship encouraged the frequent celebration of communion. These attempts at more frequent communion were rejected by the populace out of a love for the festivity of outdoor communion seasons with their accompanying spiritual and communal refreshment. Communion seasons were certainly times of spiritual revival, but also people would travel to these meetings for community with others. This would also tie together with the Reformed rejection of a liturgical calendar with the communion season becoming the Reformed feast days.
Schmidt clearly argues that communion seasons resulted in a depth of piety among those who partook. However, he does note that this could be short-lived with communicants being pious only for the communion season, and then falling back into sin (and despair as well - some important notes about assurance of salvation being tied to the observation of the sacrament). These swings in behavior would be a critique by some historically against communion seasons.
One thing that is apparent with communion seasons is their extravagant ritual with fast days, preparatory sermons, the numerous seatings at the tables, and then a day of thanksgiving. Some Presbyterians would argue against these rituals, desiring a return to Biblical simplicity in the observance of this sacrament. Some pastors would decry the chaos and disorder that such festivities had.
Schmidt demonstrates that as there became a greater push for frequency in communion (think here not monthly or weekly, but quarterly), communion seasons slowly died in popularity. Schmidt does note that even as the argument was for more frequent communion, it often meant less frequent for the faithful. With the prevalence of communion seasons and the willingness of the faithful to travel for these seasons, more frequent (or we could say more regular) meant less participation in the sacrament ultimately. During the height of the practice of communion seasons, people could get to upwards of 12 communions a year, but with the ascendancy of quarterly, more and more people started partaking only 4 times a year.
The push for quarterly communion was not the only reason, and likely not the main reason, for the decline of communion seasons. Schmidt notes that the Victorian era had a tremendous influence on these seasons. The weeping, fear, emotions, and the potential for civil disorder warred against a Victorian desire for respectability. But also, there seems to have been concern with the lack of work during communion seasons, with people criticizing communicants with being idle. Schmidt also argues that there was a connection with the prohibition movement and the decline in communion seasons.
Schmidt argues that communion seasons were not really a question about frequency, but actually more about festivity. He argues that medieval Scotland held annual communion but then the Reformers tried to unsuccessfully bring about monthly communion (in an attempt to move away from superstition around the eucharist). He argues briefly that this was one reason that the Westminster Directory for Worship encouraged the frequent celebration of communion. These attempts at more frequent communion were rejected by the populace out of a love for the festivity of outdoor communion seasons with their accompanying spiritual and communal refreshment. Communion seasons were certainly times of spiritual revival, but also people would travel to these meetings for community with others. This would also tie together with the Reformed rejection of a liturgical calendar with the communion season becoming the Reformed feast days.
Schmidt clearly argues that communion seasons resulted in a depth of piety among those who partook. However, he does note that this could be short-lived with communicants being pious only for the communion season, and then falling back into sin (and despair as well - some important notes about assurance of salvation being tied to the observation of the sacrament). These swings in behavior would be a critique by some historically against communion seasons.
One thing that is apparent with communion seasons is their extravagant ritual with fast days, preparatory sermons, the numerous seatings at the tables, and then a day of thanksgiving. Some Presbyterians would argue against these rituals, desiring a return to Biblical simplicity in the observance of this sacrament. Some pastors would decry the chaos and disorder that such festivities had.
Schmidt demonstrates that as there became a greater push for frequency in communion (think here not monthly or weekly, but quarterly), communion seasons slowly died in popularity. Schmidt does note that even as the argument was for more frequent communion, it often meant less frequent for the faithful. With the prevalence of communion seasons and the willingness of the faithful to travel for these seasons, more frequent (or we could say more regular) meant less participation in the sacrament ultimately. During the height of the practice of communion seasons, people could get to upwards of 12 communions a year, but with the ascendancy of quarterly, more and more people started partaking only 4 times a year.
The push for quarterly communion was not the only reason, and likely not the main reason, for the decline of communion seasons. Schmidt notes that the Victorian era had a tremendous influence on these seasons. The weeping, fear, emotions, and the potential for civil disorder warred against a Victorian desire for respectability. But also, there seems to have been concern with the lack of work during communion seasons, with people criticizing communicants with being idle. Schmidt also argues that there was a connection with the prohibition movement and the decline in communion seasons.
October 27, 2015
People interested in trans-atlantic religion or in how religious ceremonies can be transformed upon transplantation to a new context need to read this book. I also recommend it for Presbyterians, who will likely come away with a broader and perhaps somewhat different appreciation for how their religious tradition influenced America.
July 17, 2018
14 “Many of the patterns of Catholic spirituality, however, were not easily or simply displaced by Protestant forms. This conflict between the legacies of Catholic devotion and the innovations of Protestant worship is important for understanding the later emergence of the sacramental occasions.”
20 Attacked the Catholic religious seasons. “By the end of the seventeenth century this attack had turned on the Presbyterians, for they had virtually transformed summer and early fall into one long sacramental season in which the communions were openly hailed as the high days of the year.”
32 “By the mid-1630s communion occasions had become an important means by which the most zealous Presbyterians were forwarding their cause.”
34 “The debates of the 1640s, centered on Westminster, revealed the extent to which the Scottish Presbyterians were devoted to a certain way of celebrating the eucharist. The rituals of the Lord’s Supper, once unified in the Latin Mass, had become a way of defining one religious community over against another.”
41 “Hallowed by retelling and enlargement, the story of the Covenanters—their conventicles, sufferings, and clandestine communions—became a noble, at times almost sacral part of the Presbyterian past. The communion seasons, high points in the militant struggle and long endurance of the Covenanters, had become wrapped up in that hallowed history. Participation in them had become part of what it meant to be a Scottish Presbyterian. The Covenanters had added the glorious history of Presbyterian sacrifice to the sacred history of Christ’s suffering and death.”
53 How the seasons were like the assembly of Israel’s tribes.
65 “While religious ecstasy, such as visions and fainting away, had been fairly common in the evangelical Presbyterian tradition, the sacramental occasions of the Great Revival, at least in several instances, markedly exceeded the former communions in the range and prevalence of ecstatic behavior.”
“At minimum the Old World festival was facilitating the emergence of this American form of renewal, the camp meeting. Old World influences on American revivalism were profound, and of all places such influences were particularly notable on the frontier.”
87 “The sacramental occasion could involve or evoke various thresholds that potentially spanned from birth through youth and adulthood to death. Scottish Presbyterianism, having shorn Christianity of its medieval sacramentalism, tended to condense in the communion season a number of traditional Christian rituals of passage.”
160-1 “Dramatic eucharistic experience, more than being built upon anxiety, | was founded ultimately upon Christ’s presence in the sacrament.”
166 “The sacramental occasion always held the power to marry souls—male and female—to the Bridegroom, but it would appear that women responded to Christ’s nuptial offers more often, more comfortably, and more fully than did men.
“Sacramental piety, as it shifted from recollecting the suffering Christ to awaiting the mystical marriage to the Bridegroom, began to look more forward than backward.”
171 “Enlightened rationalism would also threaten traditional Reformed views of the eucharist; Christ’s real spiritual presence in the sacrament, for example, would be increasingly challenged as memorialistic doctrines of even more skeptical ones gained ascendancy.”
200 “To the reformers of the hoy fair, this privatization of religion was essential for safeguarding public order. The indulgence of crowds, within a religious context as well as others, had come to be seen as fraught with social risk, especially as the changing economic order made control of an increasingly distinct working class even more difficult.”
216 “Evangelical ritualism, as evidenced in the sacramental occasion, extended particularly to notions of spectacle, of seeing the Christian faith enacted.” Despite the emphasis on preaching, or perhaps because of it.
20 Attacked the Catholic religious seasons. “By the end of the seventeenth century this attack had turned on the Presbyterians, for they had virtually transformed summer and early fall into one long sacramental season in which the communions were openly hailed as the high days of the year.”
32 “By the mid-1630s communion occasions had become an important means by which the most zealous Presbyterians were forwarding their cause.”
34 “The debates of the 1640s, centered on Westminster, revealed the extent to which the Scottish Presbyterians were devoted to a certain way of celebrating the eucharist. The rituals of the Lord’s Supper, once unified in the Latin Mass, had become a way of defining one religious community over against another.”
41 “Hallowed by retelling and enlargement, the story of the Covenanters—their conventicles, sufferings, and clandestine communions—became a noble, at times almost sacral part of the Presbyterian past. The communion seasons, high points in the militant struggle and long endurance of the Covenanters, had become wrapped up in that hallowed history. Participation in them had become part of what it meant to be a Scottish Presbyterian. The Covenanters had added the glorious history of Presbyterian sacrifice to the sacred history of Christ’s suffering and death.”
53 How the seasons were like the assembly of Israel’s tribes.
65 “While religious ecstasy, such as visions and fainting away, had been fairly common in the evangelical Presbyterian tradition, the sacramental occasions of the Great Revival, at least in several instances, markedly exceeded the former communions in the range and prevalence of ecstatic behavior.”
“At minimum the Old World festival was facilitating the emergence of this American form of renewal, the camp meeting. Old World influences on American revivalism were profound, and of all places such influences were particularly notable on the frontier.”
87 “The sacramental occasion could involve or evoke various thresholds that potentially spanned from birth through youth and adulthood to death. Scottish Presbyterianism, having shorn Christianity of its medieval sacramentalism, tended to condense in the communion season a number of traditional Christian rituals of passage.”
160-1 “Dramatic eucharistic experience, more than being built upon anxiety, | was founded ultimately upon Christ’s presence in the sacrament.”
166 “The sacramental occasion always held the power to marry souls—male and female—to the Bridegroom, but it would appear that women responded to Christ’s nuptial offers more often, more comfortably, and more fully than did men.
“Sacramental piety, as it shifted from recollecting the suffering Christ to awaiting the mystical marriage to the Bridegroom, began to look more forward than backward.”
171 “Enlightened rationalism would also threaten traditional Reformed views of the eucharist; Christ’s real spiritual presence in the sacrament, for example, would be increasingly challenged as memorialistic doctrines of even more skeptical ones gained ascendancy.”
200 “To the reformers of the hoy fair, this privatization of religion was essential for safeguarding public order. The indulgence of crowds, within a religious context as well as others, had come to be seen as fraught with social risk, especially as the changing economic order made control of an increasingly distinct working class even more difficult.”
216 “Evangelical ritualism, as evidenced in the sacramental occasion, extended particularly to notions of spectacle, of seeing the Christian faith enacted.” Despite the emphasis on preaching, or perhaps because of it.
September 23, 2011
This is a must-read for Presbyterians, for Protestants of American evangelical heritage, and for enthusiasts of American religious history.
Schmidt does a wonderful job of showing how revivalism and sacramentalism were of a piece with each other in early modern Scotland and how the Lord's Supper and rituals surrounding it -- some of them distinctively Reformed -- held a central place in the piety of early Protestantism.
As a historian, he engages the sources and figures he's writing about with such generosity, too -- I found it tremendously refreshing. A wonderful work.
Schmidt does a wonderful job of showing how revivalism and sacramentalism were of a piece with each other in early modern Scotland and how the Lord's Supper and rituals surrounding it -- some of them distinctively Reformed -- held a central place in the piety of early Protestantism.
As a historian, he engages the sources and figures he's writing about with such generosity, too -- I found it tremendously refreshing. A wonderful work.
October 12, 2011
Leigh Eric Schmidt is a careful, sympathetic, and insightful historian. While only the most dedicated readers will plow through the wealth of primary witness accounts, the journey is worth it. I believe the book came from Schmidt's doctoral dissertation, and it still has that feel. The bibliography is impressive, and I am ransacking it for my own dissertation!
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January 25, 2008One of the books that showed me the way I wanted to do history.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews