Circle of Faith, The Story of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting, By Sally Dagnall, Vineyard Stories, Edgartown, Ma. 2010 $24.95.

T here is no other place quite like Oak Bluffs — the color and charm, the hustle and bustle, the beaches and parks and fireworks and festivals, open and free and inviting. And to think it all started as a religious retreat.

The dawn of the Island of Martha’s Vineyard as a resort community can be traced to the first Methodist camp meeting in 1835. A group of Islanders pitched tents under an isolated grove of trees for a week of prayer and religious revival. Now the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association is a National Historic Landmark. The details of the camp meeting’s growth and significance can be found in Circle of Faith, The Story of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting, by Sally Dagnall.

Circle of Faith is all that a good piece of historical nonfiction should be — factual and well organized, clearly written and loaded with intriguing photographs and sidebars that capture the spirit of its subject.

One of the most interesting things about Circle of Light is the evenhanded way in which the author explains how, in the years following that first gathering, a happy-go-lucky, nonreligious summer resort community sprang up around the sober and serious camp meeting revivals. The story of this culture clash feels a little whitewashed at times — there had to be friction between the Methodists and the upstart developers, a fence was placed around the Camp Ground at one time — but the quest for objectivity in a book designed to be a history of the camp meeting is refreshing. And while the book is called a story of the camp meeting it is also a concise look at the birth of Martha’s Vineyard as a resort community.

Evangelical religious revivals were a powerful force in mid-19th century American life. On an Island barely tapped into the rest of the world, where men made hard livings in the whaling industry, fishing and farming, the revivalist spirit of Methodism was attractive, Mrs. Dagnall writes, because “it provided comfort and was considered a religion for the common man.”

Jeremiah Pease of Edgartown became an adamant convert. According to the author, “He began to believe it would benefit Islanders to have a simple retreat where they could gather together to praise God and get away from the problems of everyday life.”

Thus began the history of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting. That first August gathering of Islanders grew steadily into an annual week of worship that attracted the religious from all over southern New England and as far away as New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania. What started with a few tents for shelter and a preacher’s platform in a rented grove on the shores of what is now Oak Bluffs became a much-anticipated spiritual getaway for a core of off-Island faithful. The site was “heralded for its beauty and tranquility.”

“The camp meeting at Wesleyan Grove was becoming the largest and most famous of all the camp meetings. At a time when the entire population of the Island was just over 4,000, more than 5,000 people thronged to the grove daily in the summer of 1859. And over 12,000 came on Camp Meeting Sunday,” Mrs. Dagnall writes.

Spiritual renewal was the unwavering intent and focus of the camp meetings. Until the Vineyard setting became so popular, the location of regional camp meetings had changed from year to year. As families returned time and again to the same restorative grove, the site became more and more permanent, physically and psychically. The summer retreat became an annual reunion of sorts as social roots grew among returning families.

When the whaling industry waned, Mrs. Dagnall writes that Island shipbuilders turned to carpentry and transformed the Camp Ground tents into tiny cottages, colorful architectural gems with fancy filigree and tiny second story balconies.

With more and more summer visitors, old and new, landing at the steamer wharf, it’s no wonder a group of businessmen saw value in the surrounding land. The Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company was formed and the area “was laid out in small residential lots, curved avenues and parks” designed to compliment the open and circular layout of the camp meeting grounds. A secular summer resort was born.

Mrs. Dagnall quotes a historian on the contrasts: “Inside the Camp Ground all was neighborly and hushed. Outside, quite suddenly all was clamor and commerce — a town of skating rinks, merry-go-rounds, theatres, and hotels.” That, in a nutshell, is Oak Bluffs as we know it today.

It couldn’t have been easy for the camp meeting devotees to see a boisterous village sprout up around their sacred, out-of-the-way seaside retreat. Bad for them, good for the reader, since good storytelling is based on conflict. And the fact that the two societies managed to carve out a respectable coexistence is an honorable Island civics lesson.

It’s all but astounding that the Camp Ground today — the cottages, the leafy oaks, the grand and recently restored Tabernacle — retains so much of its 19th century character and dignity. Its history, still so visually alive, is a vital piece of the Island’s cultural and economic makeup.

Circle of Faith is more than a history of the camp meeting and the birth of Oak Bluffs. The camp meeting is a significant, multidimensional piece of American history. It intersects the history of American religion, coastal life, transportation advances, architecture, wars and depressions, and the industrial, social, recreational and economic changes in society that collided on one little slice of land in the sea to create a beloved summer community that has endured for generations. Circle of Faith unobtrusively provides this context.

The simple, stoic Tabernacle cross still stands guard over the port of Oak Bluffs, a 21st century town that is a happy blend of physical and spiritual renewal, festivity and seaside beauty. In the center of it all, quiet and gracious amid the summer chaos, is the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association.

Today the Camp Ground is more social and less religious than when it began. It is a magic little place, a shady hideaway where anyone can stroll, breathe in the salt air, and transcend time.