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Rites of Passage
virginia s Anglican faith defined, demarcated, and mediated the personal rites
of passage birth, initiation, marriage, and death for the great majority of
its white population and to lesser and varying extents for non-adherents and
African Americans as well. So customary were these rituals and thus rarely
reflected upon at the time that their significance easily escapes notice, but
together with weekly worship they were basic ingredients of Virginia society
and culture. Rites of passage, Daniel Beaver suggests,   evoked social relation-
ships to assist the subject or primary beneficiary of the ritual to cross a per-
ceived boundary or threshold in the process of transition to a new status or
new social position and also represented the meaning of this transition sym-
bolically. The rites of passage were particularly sensitive points in religious
culture, an intersection of diverse forms of personal relationship and symbolic
notions of personal and shared identity.  1
Baptism
Baptism followed birth.The Prayer Book instructed parents to bring infants to
their parish church for baptism as soon as feasible after birth. Ministers   shall
often admonish the people, that they defer not the Baptism of their children
longer than the first or second Sunday next after their birth, or other holy-
day falling betweene unless upon a great and reasonable cause.  2 Virginians
responded faithfully to the spirit if not the letter of the rubric in having their
infants baptized. Entries in the register for Bristol Parish (Prince George), for
example, are reasonably complete for the early 1720s and early 1730s.3 Between
1720 and 1724, George Robertson baptized 352 persons, almost all infants or
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