A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-Century Virginia
Lauren Winner
Abstract
This book examines the physical objects found in elite Virginia households of the eighteenth century to discover what they can tell us about their owners' lives and religious practices. The author looks closely at punch bowls, needlework, mourning jewelry, baptismal gowns, biscuit molds, cookbooks, and many other items, illuminating the ways Anglicanism influenced daily activities and attitudes in colonial Virginia, particularly in the households of the gentry. In the highly laicized environment that was Virginia's Anglican Church, laypeople not only adapted English forms of church governance ... More
This book examines the physical objects found in elite Virginia households of the eighteenth century to discover what they can tell us about their owners' lives and religious practices. The author looks closely at punch bowls, needlework, mourning jewelry, baptismal gowns, biscuit molds, cookbooks, and many other items, illuminating the ways Anglicanism influenced daily activities and attitudes in colonial Virginia, particularly in the households of the gentry. In the highly laicized environment that was Virginia's Anglican Church, laypeople not only adapted English forms of church governance to the new Virginia environment. The book also focuses on religious education and girls' education, both of which were highly charged issues in eighteenth-century Virginia. It further examines the Anglicans' sturdy defences of liturgical prayer, their concomitant critiques of more self-reflexive prayers that had softened, and their prayerful sensibilities, which had begun to encompass both traditional liturgy and the more subjective prayer associated with evangelicalism by the last decade of the century.
Keywords:
Virginia,
religious practices,
household items,
Anglicanism,
daily activities,
gentry,
cookbooks,
needlework,
mourning jewelry,
baptismal gowns
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300124699 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300124699.001.0001 |
