The Marietta Campmeeting has been cancelled only once since it began in 1837.
That was during the Civil War.
Organizers of the summer religious revival discussed the possibility of calling off this year’s event due to COVID-19. They heard from longtime attendees, some of whom said they would not be coming under any circumstances. Others said that if there was a campmeeting, they would definitely be there.
“We tried to reach a happy medium,” said Cheryl Lassiter, president of the Marietta Campmeeting Tentholders Association, explaining the decision to go on.
“We just hated to just not completely have it at all.”
Most large-gathering festivals and events in East Cobb have been either postponed or cancelled altogether since March and into the fall, including the EAST COBBER parade and festival.
Instead of the usual 10 days of worship, music and food and social activities at the 23-acre Marietta Campground on Roswell Road, this year’s campmeeting will be reduced to one weekend, July 17-19.
Lassiter said the schedule change also accommodates the Georgia public health emergency, which is set to expire July 12.
The public is still invited to attend the campmeeting, but there will be only four services: One on Friday night, two on Saturday and another on Sunday morning. There also will be a tentholders’ meeting for those occupying the nearly two dozen cabins on the campground property.
But there won’t be the usual opening night picnic, watermelon-cutting, ice cream social, ministry feeding events and the children’s church service.
Instead of full choirs, singing will be led by a handful of people under the arbor, a covered outdoor tabernacle that’s the focal point of the revival.
Reusable programs and hymnals will be replaced by throwaway songsheets with familiar tunes.
The arbor can hold up to 400 people, but Lassiter said in recent years that daytime worship services have averaged between 25-50 people, and 150-250 people at night.
The campmeeting will follow social distancing protocols, she said, allowing for families to be able to sit together. There also will be hand sanitizing stations on the property and masks and gloves will be available.
Despite all the rearrangements, Lassiter admitted there is a chance everything may have to be cancelled, given growing concerns over continuing rises in positive COVID cases in Georgia, especially in the metro Atlanta area.
“I don’t think anyone would doubt our reasons if we did,” she said.
Lassiter noted that during the Spanish Flu pandemic which hit the United States hard in the winter of 1919, the Marietta Campmeeting went on the following summer.
That was a stroke of good seasonal fortune.
However, like so many aspects of daily life today, and especially special events like a venerable religious revival, planning for the Marietta Campmeeting has been a very fluid thing.
“It’s still pretty iffy,” Lassiter said, “but we’re gonna try.”
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