![]() For the vast majority of individuals and families living outside small population centers, the only religious guidance was offered by an occasional circuit preacher. The south had few church facilities and even fewer ordained clergy. Several ministers took that inspiration south to Virginia and North Carolina where Baptists and Methodists grew to eventually outnumber other denominations. In the early 1700s, New England Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists rose in a Great Awakening calling their followers to adhere to stricter and more involved guidelines. Established European religions were recast to accommodate their new environments. Like other immigrants, early European settlers brought religion with them to the New World. ![]() Religion has been a steering influence in the history of not only the Appalachian region but the United States itself. In the late 19th century, the movement reappeared in Appalachia as Holiness groups in the Methodist Church adopted camp-meetings and renewed the emotional spirituality of the Great Awakening in new Holiness and Pentecostal churches across the mountain region. Deeply emotional and evangelical, camp meetings are credited with moral reform and the rapid growth of church membership until, by the 1840s, the established meeting-houses of Methodists and Baptists began to replace them. These large outdoor revival meetings, lasting several days, were a central feature of the Great Awakening and ideally suited to a frontier region with few established churches and fewer ministers. Appalachian religious belief and expression were deeply influenced by the camp-meeting movement that swept the South in the early 19th century.
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