Camp Meeting

The camp meeting is a form of Protestant Christian religious service originating in Britain and once common in some parts of the United States, wherein people would travel from a large area to a particular site to camp out, listen to itinerant preachers, and pray. This suited the frontier lifestyle well, as such areas often lacked traditional churches and offered few other types of diversion from work. The practice was a major component of the Second Great Awakening, a rapid increase in the popularity of various Protestant denominations in the United States in the early 19th century, especially Methodists and Baptists.

Read more about Camp Meeting:  Camp Meetings in America, Camp Meetings in British Methodism, Music and Hymn Singing

Famous quotes containing the words camp and/or meeting:

    ... the Ovarian Theory of Literature, or, rather, its complement, the Testicular Theory. A recent camp follower ... of this explicit theory is ... Norman Mailer, who has attributed his own gift, and the literary gift in general, solely and directly to the possession of a specific pair of organs. One writes with these organs, Mailer has said ... and I have always wondered with what shade of ink he manages to do it.
    Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)

    I’ve met a lot of murderers in my day, but Dr. Garth, whatever he is, is the first man I’ve ever met who was polite to me and still made the chills run up and down my back.
    Robert D. Andrews, and Nick Grindé. Police detective, Before I Hang, describing his meeting with Dr. Garth (1940)