Revivalism and the Advent of Cash Economy on the Georgia Coast

Abstract

in the very year that the black community was firmly catapulted into participation in the national economy recalls various efforts to understand religious revivalism as a response to sudden and disturbing changes in a group's socioeconomic circumstances. Perhaps the best known of such accounts-E. P Thompson's description of the Methodist response to the industrialization of England-convincingly illustrates the manner in which such religious movements may accommodate individuals to the demands of new work rhythms. However, the evidence from St. Simons Island, Georgia, suggests that in other instances the implicit ideology ofa religious movement may present challenges to dominant conceptualizations of the social order. The ostensive otherworldliness ofAfrican-American Pentecostalism may militate against overt challenges to the status quo in the here and now; yet on the ideological level it withholds validation of dominant precepts by seeking meaning in the sphere of sacred relations and by attributing circumstances and events to forces beyond the control of individuals. In 1928, a year that heralded far-reaching economic changes for the island of St. Simons, Georgia and the adjacent mainland town of Brunswick, two "revival" movements appeared. In the island's black community, the first Pentecostal "saints" received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Simultaneously, members of the English Church Army-an evangelizing movement established in the early part of the century to renew the interest of the working class in the Anglican Churchvisited the white Episcopal churches of Brunswick and held a series of wellattended, exuberant out-door revival meetings. Scholars have consistently associated the history of innovative religious movements among African-Americans with experiences of social dislocation and disorganization. From slave religion to African-American Pentecostalism, the effort to understand "ecstatic" or "enthusiastic" religious practices has focused on the way in which they "compensate" individuals for the experience of deprivation. In this century, those African-American religious movements which, due perhaps to their lack of denominational stature, are usually referred to as "sects" or "cults" have been regarded as the response of people suffering the social dislocations caused by migration, industrialization, urbanization, or marginalization. This is true of the writing of those who have attempted to address more general questions about the nature of African-American religion (Clark 1937, Fauset 1944, Frazier 1963), as well as of those who have written specifically about African-American Pentecostal