Review: And They All Sang Hallelujah

In And They All Sang Hallelujah - Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800-1845 by Dickson D. Bruce, Jr. examines the religious camp-meetings that took place across the southern frontier in the early to middle nineteenth-century. Using primary sources ranging from camp-meeting instructional pamphlets to preacher’s auto-biographies, Bruce argues that the camp-meetings were more than just a social mechanism for the frontier plain-folk (described as the non-wealthy and non-starving masses). Through a depth of research and analysis, Bruce attempts to show that a true and somewhat unique religion developed on the frontiers of the time.

The plain-folk of the southern frontier were a people who had little stability in their lives. Most of them were non slave owners who survived mainly on subsistence farming, with a few cash crops to provide for essentials. Driven ever further into the frontiers by the encroaching plantation owners and land speculators, they lived a mobile life. Due to this, they developed a type of frontier individualism with a “belief in self-reliance, that each individual could control his own fate” (p. 31). The plain-folk developed a view of themselves as different from the rest of American Society, and they needed a religion to match that view.

The individualistic life of the frontier people was rugged, and vice was rampant in the communities. Fighting, gambling, horse-racing and boasting took the form of entertainment, adding to the sense of insecurity felt on the frontiers. Some took solace in the whiskey bottle, others “found means for countering the hedonism of their society through participation in frontier religious organizations” (p. 47). Due to the dispersion of the population on the frontiers, these religious societies took the form of camp-meetings.

Camp meetings across the southern frontier were set up in a similar fashion.  Set up in an area of wilderness chosen to convey the sense of a cathedral, tents would be set up surrounding the congregational area in the center.  This area was segregated by both race and sex, with the pulpit raised high at the front.  This setup “made for a highly structured situation which replicated the distinctions that existed in plain-folk society, as in sexual and racial segregation, and in the frontier sects, as in the physical distinctions made between leaders and lay people” (p, 84). 

By “focusing directly on sources of community instability and frontier tensions” (p. 47), camp-meetings met the religious needs of the frontiersmen and their families.  People would come from all over the frontier to attend the camp-meetings. As conversion was the goal of the camp-meetings, visitors were compelled “to choose eternal life or eternal death.  The resulting dilemma may have contributed in no small way to the frenetic quality of camp-meeting conversions; it certainly made the necessity to choose seem pressing” (p. 97). 

The very structure of the camps was set up to gain conversions, a sometimes lengthy process involving the conviction of sins, the mourning of damnation, and finally the conversion through the grace of Jesus.  Those going through the process often jerked or barked during the process as they were overcome by the Holy Spirit.  During the process, traditional age, gender, and racial roles were often reversed as white converts were exhorted on by women, children and even blacks.  Once converted, “the newly minted saint was able to identify with that common foundation” (p. 89) of the congregation as a whole.  Thus, the camp-meetings served to provide the mostly solitary frontier people with a greater sense of community they lacked in their day-to-day lives.

In Hallelujah, Bruce gives us great insight into the religious lives of the plain-folk of the southern frontiers. While this book raises some valid points, it seems to drift into the realm of folklore research towards the end. By examining some of the hymns used at the camp-meetings, Bruce attempts to gain an insight into minds of the plain-folk, asserting that the religion they followed was used as an escape from the world around them. At times contradictory[1], this book nevertheless gives the reader an interesting look at a minor religious phenomenon of the early nineteenth-century. It does not, however, give an overall picture of frontier religious belief in the sense that “members of both denominations [Baptists and Methodists] were definitely a minority of the southern population, as were religious people generally” (p. 4).

Footnotes

[1]It is hard to criticize a book for what it is not, but it seems a discussion into why so small a portion of the population was participating would have been helpful. Aside from a fleeting mention in the early part of the book, nothing more is said about the comparative lack of participation in camp-meetings by the overall frontier population. This may be explained partially by the quote already cited from page 31 that a “belief in self-reliance, that each individual could control his own fate.”