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.ÿþfrequent visits by the parish minister.  Church  connoted a congregation ofgreater size requiring a share of the parson s attention equal to any other  church  or   churches  in the parish.The terms also applied to the size, signifi-cance, and permanence of the buildings in which the congregations met.Butto say anything more precise or specific about these terms or the relative size ofbuildings and congregations is impossible because usage was determined notby formula or edict but by local custom.  Church  and   chapel  thus betterdescribe relationships than actual numbers of worshipers or the dimensions ofbuildings.  Chapel  always suggested the possibility of transition to   church, and this did take place, although with no guarantee that parishioners wouldimmediately stop calling their place of worship the   chapel.  Parish organiza-tion thus displayed great variety: one, two, three, or even four churches; onechurch and one, two, or three chapels; two or three churches and one or twochapels; and so on.In 1724 ministers in twenty-seven of Virginia s forty-six parishes respond-ing to the bishop of London s questionnaire reported serving a total of fifty-three congregations (churches and chapels).46 Nine parishes reported a singlecongregation, eleven had two, six parishes had three, and one reported fourcongregations.This works out closely to an average of two congregations perparish.It is highly probable, then, that Virginia s forty-six parishes included aminimum of ninety-two Anglican congregations.47 Without benefit of a mid-century questionnaire but utilizing bits and pieces of evidence vestry min-utes, county court records, and correspondence it is possible to update the1724 survey.Thirty-two of Virginia s seventy-eight parishes (41 percent) in the1750s reported a total of 83 congregations.An average of nearly 2.6 congre-gations per parish, corrected for regional variations, projects a conservativeestimate of a total of190 Anglican congregations in the1750s.This is twice thenumber of Virginia s Anglican churches (96) as recorded by Edwin Gaustad inhis Historical Atlas of Religion in America, a figure which in turn has been relied uponby scholars of American religion in taking measure of colonial Anglicanism.48Two decades later in the 1770s, reports of seventy-six of the Old Domin-ion s ninety-five parishes (80 percent) identified 204 congregations.Again, theaverage corrected for regional variations projects a total of at least 249 Angli-can congregations in Virginia on the eve of the Revolution.49 The implicationsof these figures are profound for coming to terms with the size and scope ofthe Anglican establishment in Virginia, for grasping its strength relative to thechurch s presence elsewhere in colonial British America, and for measuringAnglicanism relative to other religious allegiances throughout the colonies.Parish Formation 29 [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]