Samuel Harris

After emerging during the Great Awakening of the mid-18th century, the Baptist movement in Virginia soon fractured into two groups—the “Regulars,” who were conservative and Calvinist, and the “Separates,” who were Arminian and evangelistic. Unlike the solemn and orderly Regulars, the Separates were characterized by fiery, emotional preaching and services, and they soon came to be the dominant evangelical force in Virginia.

The Separates were opposed by not only the Regulars, but especially by the orderly, traditional Anglicans—Virginia’s official church. The Anglicans objected to the enthusiastic practices of the Separates, and they took special offense at the Separates’ strong insistence on the separation of church and state. Separate Baptist preachers refused to apply for preaching licenses and denied any government authority to regulate matters of faith. Their stand against established religion made them the most persecuted religious minority in Virginia.

Despite the persecution the Separates spread rapidly across Virginia. By the time of the Revolution there were more than 10,000 of them in Virginia and by 1790 they had established more than 200 churches. One of the most effective of the Separate Baptist evangelists was Samuel Harris.

Harris was an unlikely convert. The Baptist movement (particularly the Separates) appealed primarily to the poor and less educated, and Harris was a prominent and wealthy man. He was a member of the House of Burgesses, a colonel in the militia, and he owned thousands of acres in Halifax (later Pittsylvania) County. In 1758, while serving as a militia officer on the Virginia frontier, his curiosity led him to attend a Baptist camp revival. That day he had a conversion experience that changed his life.

In the process of building a new prestigious home at the time of his conversion, Harris turned the new building into a church instead. For the next forty years he devoted himself to founding churches and promoting religious liberty. Known to other Separates as “The Apostle of Virginia,” Harris not only founded 26 churches, he was also instrumental in securing a law that made marriages conducted by any minister valid (rather than only those performed by Anglicans) and in preventing the adoption of a law that would tax Virginians to support a state church. He lobbied Jefferson, Madison, and Washington for separation of church and state. When the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786, Virginia became the first government in the world to establish by statute the complete separation of church and state—called by one historian “the greatest contribution of America to the sum of Western civilization.”

Samuel Harris was born on January 12, 1724, two hundred ninety-nine years ago today. The marker shown in the photograph is in front of County Line Church in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.