White Oak Primitive Baptist Church

This church illuminates one of the religious currents in Virginia in the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The Primitive Baptist faith rests on the belief that doctrine originates in scripture, not in interpretation. Consequently, Primitive Baptist churches are exceedingly plain, without ornamentation, as well as nonhierarchical in interior arrangement. The exact date of this building remains unclear, although the later is the more probable. The building is largely unaltered, and the lean-to addition is of later date. The interior is one large room with pews, a wooden altar, and two cast iron stoves. The framing members are all pit sawn and hewn. The plaster walls and simple moldings date from 1867. Outbuildings consist of a woodshed and men's and women's outhouses. A graveyard is adjacent.