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Early Preachers Had Impact On Town
The summer of 1828 found pews overflowing in a town later dubbed the “City of Churches.” More than 1,000 people made professions of faith at camp meetings conducted by the Rev. John Early. Five churches held revivals that summer in Lynchburg, which evangelist Lorenzo Dow had called the “seat of Satan’s Kingdom” for its taverns. By 1830, Lynchburg was thoroughly injected with spiritual fervor, Drinking, dancing and gambling were strictly taboo; religion was the dominant cultural force.
Though church growth continued until the Civil War, major revivals were not held until April 1875, when meetings at Centenary Methodist and First Presbyterian churches shook the town once again. According to W. Asbury Christian’s “Lynchburg and It’s People,” the tow churches “were crowded night after night for nearly seven weeks, and it was not unusual to see a large number of people waiting at the church doors before dark, so as to get seats.” The April 9, 1875, issue of the Lynchburg News describes an altar “thronged with penitents” at First Presbyterian while a “singular quiet” permeated the congregation.
When all the souls were tallied, more than 500, including several prominent Lynchburg citizens, had been added to the Christian ranks. Movements had begun earlier in the century to convert the town’s black residents, slave and free, whose worship was relegated to specific pews in Lynchburg’s white churches.
Blacks also gathered for service in an old downtown theater building until 1869, when the cornerstone of African Baptist Church was laid on Court Street. Ten years later, they established another Baptist church at Sixth and Court Streets. By 1886, blacks had formed five churches of Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations. The area’s religious history can be traced to a settlement of Pennsylvania Presbyterians at Hat Creek in Campbell County in 1742. Nevertheless, it was the Quakers who first established a congregation in Lynchburg, building a log-meeting house in 1757. Eight years later, the Church of England built a small chapel, which burned in 1802, on Court Street.
Methodists were the majority group in the early 1800’s, forming their first Lynchburg congregation in 1804.
Presbyterians and Baptists followed in 1815. The Episcopal Church, and offshoot of the Church of England, was organized in 1822. As early as the Civil War, Lynchburg had a Jewish community, which later established a temple on Church Street. At one time or another, every domination in Lynchburg had a building on this street. Many churches splintered into new congregations during the 19th century. By 1886, 15 churches and a Jewish temple served the city’s 12,000 people.
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