In the 2020s, during a period of high emigration within our country for reasons ranging from Covid reaction and Blue-Red State politics to traditional ones (work, family, retirement), Christians will do well to heed the warnings of their forefathers two centuries ago. . . . Don’t be a Freddie.

Recently, a Christian brother told me of a friend of his who had decided to move from his home in Tennessee to another State. “Freddie” was well-established in his local church where he was under the faithful ministry of God’s Word and enjoyed meaningful fellowship as well as accountability. He was growing in his walk with Christ. Freddie moved for a valid reason – to be near his children – but he did so without thinking seriously about what his church options might be in his new community. Freddie was warned, but in the end he moved and came to realize the consequences for his own soul by landing in a weak local church.

Ours is not the first generation to experience this malady. Two centuries ago, Americans, professing Christians included, were on the move, part of an unprecedented population shift often referred to as “emigration” or “migration.” The widespread emigration of families from churches along the Atlantic seaboard to what was then the Southwest – West Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas (some were territories), disrupted a number of those churches left behind. But the trend also endangered the souls of those who came to wander like lost sheep in destitute regions with few churches and fewer ministers.

Church records from the period addressed these problems. Several instances will suffice for our purposes.

During the 1820s and 30s the desire for wealth or material gain – at the expense of moral and religious obligations – affected churches in both Virginia and the Carolinas. Generally, the trend of emigration was due to the attraction of richer agricultural lands to the west and southwest.

In 1836 the Richmond, Virginia, Southern Religious Telegraph covered an address made by Rev. James M. Brown to a domestic missionary society. Paraphrasing the Presbyterian minister, the Telegraph warned:

A great cause of discouragement in many places, through Eastern Virginia and Carolina, was the desire of wealth. The passion for wealth, for getting rich speedily, was ruining our churches—was carrying hundreds from them to the wilderness, or to the cotton lands of Alabama or Mississippi. Talk to them about erecting churches and sustaining the ministry in their own neighborhood or county, and they feel little or no interest. They are going to the West—they will emigrate as soon as they can sell their plantations.[1]

During the period, economic opportunities abounded, facilitated by agricultural lands recently made more accessible and by new and improved transportation options such as crowned roads (for water runoff), canals, steamboats, and the beginnings of railroads.

In Iredell County, North Carolina, Rev. Stephen Frontis served two Presbyterian churches for eight years in a fruitful ministry. But Frontis’ two churches lost 72 communicants, mostly due to emigration. For a body that in 1836 reported 164 communing members, the losses were high. The dissolution of Frontis’ pastoral relation with his flock “was by mutual consent of Pastor and people.” But the principal cause “was the strong tide of emigration to the west, which threatened to break up entirely the congregation. In less than 3 years 56 communicants were dismissed, almost all of whom went to West Tennessee and these embraced the strength” of the congregation.[2]

Presbyterians were not the only ones affected, however. In 1835 several Baptist associations in North Carolina expressed the same concern. A circular written for the Sandy Creek Association stated: “So deeply has the plague of making money smitten our land, as to have produced a universal spirit of emigration. No man . . . seems satisfied with his home. He hears of golden prospects to the south and west, and he must needs go, like his neighbors, to share the spoil.” Acknowledging the legitimacy of seeking to improve one’s material condition, nevertheless the churchman warned: “Do not . . . even [Christians] think more of rich crops and cotton, and buying and selling slaves, than they do of cultivating the soil of the heart, and making it bring forth abundantly?” Such “sighing for the West” was a source of upheaval in many communities and churches alike and a cause for angst on the part of church leaders.[3]

South Carolina was affected, too. In the mid-1830s, the Camden Journal described the ongoing migration in terms similar to those from parts of Virginia and North Carolina:

The rage for migration southwesterly has we think increased during the past year beyond all calculation. . . In the course of one short week we observed nearly two hundred from North Carolina and the upper part of [South Carolina]. From our own district the number is really so great as to make one melancholy, whole families disposing of their possessions here for little or nothing and migrating to the West.[4]

In 1838, the Presbyterians added their lament over “the spirit of emigration,” especially from the western part of South Carolina where many congregations were said to have been “almost broken up by the removal of their members into other parts of the country.” The churchmen saw no problem with the act of removal itself, but that

emigration which is prompted only by love of gain, without any regard to the glory of God or the best interests of the Gospel, is not consistent with the duty or the profession of Christian men. . . . To remove to distant parts of the country without the Gospel, or without any reasonable prospect of securing its ordinances, is unfaithfulness to the Churches deserted, to the families of the emigrants, and to the general cause of religion.[5] 

Their conclusion was blunt, offering wise counsel for any age – including ours: “It is wrong for professed followers of the Lord, to wander about like lost sheep in the wilds of the West without a Shepherd to guide them, or a visible fold to contain them.”[6]

In the 2020s, during a period of high emigration within our country for reasons ranging from Covid reaction and Blue-Red State politics to traditional ones (work, family, retirement), Christians will do well to heed the warnings of their forefathers two centuries ago. . . . Don’t be a Freddie.

For the Christian man or head-of-household, before you move (not after): consider the glory of God, the best interests of the Gospel, and the proximity of a true and faithful church. First and foremost, for the welfare of the souls entrusted to your care. This is your duty and high privilege.

Forrest L. Marion is a ruling elder in the First Presbyterian Church (PCA), Crossville, Tennessee.

[1] Southern Religious Telegraph, Apr. 8, 1836 [emphasis in original].

[2] “Bethany Presbyterian Church, Iredell County, North Carolina,” abstract of session books copied by Mrs. M. G. McCubbins, Oct. 1918, PCUSA.

[3] George Washington Paschal, History of North Carolina Baptists, volume II (of 2 vols.) (Raleigh, N.C., 1955), 388-89.

[4] Joan A. Inabinet, Lyttleton Street United Methodist Church of Camden, S.C., A History (Camden, 2003), 49-50; The Fifth Federal Census, 1830, South Carolina, Kershaw County (Camden, 1994), i-ii.

[5] Minutes of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia . . . November 1838 . . . (Charleston, 1838), 31 [emphasis added].

[6] Minutes . . . South Carolina and Georgia . . . 1838, 31-33.