Indeed, to the surprise of many whites, sometimes blacks exercised spiritual authority over members of both races. In the Baptist church at Allen's Creek, for example, slaves who were "preachers of talents" baptized both whites and blacks in the late 178os.86 Sometime after 179o, Robert Semple reported that the biracial congregation at Gloucester "at length did what it would hardly have been supposed would have been done by Virginians; they chose for their pastor William Lemon, a man of color. He, though not white as to his natural complexion, had been washed in the laver of regeneration; he
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