evan

“The Christianity of the region was not influential; ministers were few, and deficient in intelligence and weight, being chiefly the most uncultivated members of the Baptist communion, or of the itinerant fraternity of the Methodists. If the citizens saw anything of Episcopacy or Presbyterianism, it was only from the transient visits and sermons of ministers from a distance. The state of religious opinion was just what the observing man would expect from such influences. The profession of Christianity was chiefly confined to the more ignorant classes; and among them Church discipline and Christian morals were relaxed. Men of the ruling houses, like the Jacksons, were too often found to be corrupted by the power and wealth, with which the teeming fertility of their new country was rewarding their talents. Minds such as theirs, self-educated by the activity and competition of their bustling times, were too vigorous to acknowledge the intellectual sway of a class of ministers who dispensed for sermons their crude notions of experimental piety in barbarous English. There were few cultivated minds to represent the authority of the gospel. Consequently, most of the men of position were openly neglectful of Christianity, and some were infidels.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, LIFE AND CAMPAIGNS OF STONEWALL JACKSON, Annotated.