The established church in Virginia was the Anglican church, which received its legal support and its finances from the Colony of Virginia. There were no bishops in Virginia, and each minister was responsible to the local Vestry, a board of lay persons in the parish. As long as the minister satisfied the Vestry, he was on his own. In this situation, religion was apt to become stale and kept alive only by the law which required church attendance.
Signs of a breakup in this routine started in 1743 when several people, led by Samuel Morris, a bricklayer, started reading religious tracts and absenting themselves from attending the Anglican church. Many of these people had been inspired by the sermons of George Whitefield, a breakaway from John Wesley, who visited Williamsburg on a tour of the colonies in 1739.
The people meeting with Morris grew to an extent that a meeting house was built for them. Morris himself was invited to travel and to conduct meetings at a considerable distance away from his home. These initial meetings were in the Tidewater region. At this same time, the Scots-Irish and others were settling western and southwestern Virginian, and they brought Presbyterian thought with them. The group around Morris invited Rev. William Robinson, a Presbyterian missionary, to come and preach. Thereafter, this group thought of themselves as Presbyterians.
The group had been uncertain about its identity previously and had given little thought to their affiliation. For a while, they had remembered that Martin Luther was a reformer and they called themselves Lutherans. As Presbyterians, they were called New Siders. Their preachers began to attract large crowds and the colonial and Anglican leaders began to be concerned.
Two of the points that bothered the authorities were, one, the itinerant nature of the preachers, and, two, the doctrine that "a true Christian may know whether a Minister be converted or not by hearing him preach or pray." The Anglicans felt that a minister achieved his status by his ordination by the established church, whereas the New Siders placed more emphasis on the conversion or internal conviction of the ministers.
The Anglicans made extensive use of the Book of Common Prayer, which was used in a fixed cycle. The New Siders, also called the New Lights, had little use for this ritualistic work and believed more in extemporaneous expression. Civil charges were brought against the new preachers for vilifying the "Established Religion." Some laymen were brought to Williamsburg to stand trial and were fined for unlawful assembly. In 1747, the governor and the Council issued a stiff proclamation calling for "all Itinerant Preachers" to be restrained.
( The reference I am following here is Rhys Isaac's Pulitzer prize winning book, "The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790." )
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