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Historical Highway MarkersRapidan Baptist ChurchJE-12
Rapidan Baptist Church, formed by Elijah Craig, James Reed, Samuel Harriss, and John Waller, was constituted on 14 Jan. 1773. Members of this congregation, like other Dissenters, faced prosecution for refusing to comply with laws that privileged the Church of England, Virginia's established church. Craig was arrested while preaching, as were the other Rapidan organizers, and he continued to preach while jailed in Culpeper. James Madison won the support of many local Baptists in his 1789 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives after assuring George Eve, Rapidan's pastor, that he would support a constitutional amendment guaranteeing religious freedom.
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References/Bibliographic Citation: “Rapidan Baptist Church: Church History, 1773-1973” (pamphlet). Kelly Gentry, “Rapidan Baptist Church—a Pioneering Congregation” (Madison County Historical Society, 2019). Robert Baylor Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond, 1810). John A. Ragosta, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Jeff Broadwater, James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). J. Brent Walker, “Colonial Baptist Contributions to Religious Liberty” (Baptist Joint Committee, Jan. 2011). Thomas H. Appleton Jr., “Elijah Craig (ca. 1745–18 May 1808),” Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 3: 523-524. “Madison’s Election to the First Federal Congress October 1788–February 1789,” Founders Online: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%22George%20Eve%22&s=1111311111&r=3 James Madison to George Eve, 2 Jan. 1789, Founders Online: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-11-02-0297 Mark S. Scarberry, “John Leland and James Madison: Religious Influence on the Ratification of the Constitution and on the Proposal of the Bill of Rights,” Penn State Law Review, vol. 113:3, 733-800. Lewis Peyton Little, Imprisoned Preachers and Religious Liberty in Virginia (Lynchburg: J.P. Bell Co., Inc., 1938.) |