The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism

Thomas J. Little

Description

During the late seventeenth century, a heterogeneous mixture of Protestant settlers made their way to the South Carolina lowcountry from both the Old World and elsewhere in the New. Representing a hodgepodge of European religious traditions, they shaped the foundations of a new and distinct plantation society in the British-Atlantic world. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina made vigorous efforts to recruit Nonconformists to their overseas colony by granting settlers considerable freedom of religion and liberty of conscience. Codified in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, this toleration ultimately attracted a substantial number of settlers of many and varying Christian denominations.

In The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism, Thomas J. Little refutes commonplace beliefs that South Carolina grew spiritually lethargic and indifferent to religion in the colonial era. Little argues that pluralism engendered religious renewal and revival, which developed further after Anglicans in the colony secured legal establishment for their church. The Carolina colony emerged at the fulcrum of an international Protestant awakening that embraced a more emotional, individualistic religious experience and helped to create a transatlantic evangelical movement in the mid-eighteenth century.

Offering new perspectives on both early American history and the religious history of the colonial South, The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism charts the regional spread of early evangelicalism in the too-often neglected South Carolina lowcountry—the economic and cultural center of the lower southern colonies. Although evangelical Christianity has long been and continues to be the dominant religion of the American South, historians have traditionally described it as a comparatively late-flowering development in British America. Reconstructing the history of religious revivalism in the lowcountry and placing the subject firmly within an Atlantic world context, Little demonstrates that evangelical Christianity had much earlier beginnings in prerevolutionary southern society than historians have traditionally recognized.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Protestantism
• Wesleyanism
• Josiah Smith (clergyman)
• Gospel (disambiguation)
• Protestant Reformers
• General Baptist
• Separate Baptists
• Socinianism
• Southern Baptist Convention
• Evangelism
• Seventh Day Baptist
• Puritan
• John the Baptist
• History of the Americas
• History of religions
• Evangelicalism
• Calvinism
• Baptists
• William Sayle
• Religion
• Convention baptiste du Sud
• United States
• FL
• Preacher
• KY
• LA
• TN
• MS
• Cotton Mather
• SC
• NC
• AR
• VA
• GA

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611172751
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism
The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism
Religious Revivalism in the South Carolina Lowcountry
1670-1760

Thomas J. Little

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS
2013 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Little, Thomas J. (Thomas James), 1963-
The origins of southern evangelicalism : religious revivalism in the South Carolina lowcountry, 1670-1760 / Thomas J. Little.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-274-4 (hardback) - ISBN 978-1-61117-275-1 (ebook) 1. South Carolina-Church history-17th century. 2. South Carolina-Church history-18th century. 3. Evangelicalism-Southern States-History-17th century. 4. Evangelicalism-Southern States-History-18th century. I. Title.
BR555.S6L58 2013
277.57 07-dc23
2013013550
For Sally and John
Now, I sincerely wish that things were better in this region with regard to religion than is the actual case. I would to God that there were many righteous preachers to be found here, who were really seriously concerned about the glory of God and the arch-shepherd Jesus. Then one could be hopeful that things would get better than they are now. The most distressing thing is the fact that there are preachers who do not preach and live properly in every respect; but there are also those who proclaim the word of God purely and sincerely. Among the latter one can justifiably include Mr. Whitefield, an English preacher. In America, by means of the gospel, he brought about a great awakening in an area around 1,400 miles wide. And in a very few years, very many were converted to the true God.
John Tobler, A Description of South Carolina (1754)
Contents
Preface
1
Libertines, Sectaries, and Enthusiasts The Formation of an Evangelical Tradition
2
True-Blue Protestants Religious Eclecticism and the Church of England
3
A Party of Seekers The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism
4
A Hammer and a Fire George Whitefield and the First Great Awakening
5
The Kingdom of Heaven Continuing the Great Awakening Tradition
6
Wrestling with God Protestant Evangelicalism in the Lowcountry and Beyond
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Although evangelical Christianity has long been and continues to be the predominant religious mood of the South, historians have traditionally described it as a comparatively late-flowering development in the Atlantic Protestant world. 1 Donald G. Mathews in his seminal Religion in the Old South (1977), for example, described prerevolutionary southern revivals as evolving only after the mid-1740s. Samuel S. Hill in his influential coda to Religion in the Southern States: A Historical Study (1983) stated that if one wanted to pinpoint the salient beginning [of southern Christian evangelicalism], he would turn to the 1750s or perhaps the years just after 1800. Similarly, Christine Leigh Heyrman in her award-winning Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1998) writes that evangelicalism came late to the American South, as an exotic import rather than an indigenous development. 2
Such descriptions of evangelical ascendancy in the colonial South are demonstrably deficient. Indeed, one of principal aims of this book is to show that Protestant evangelicalism had much earlier beginnings in prerevolutionary southern society than historians have traditionally understood. At the heart of the work is a detailed examination of key efforts at religious renewal and revival in the colonial South Carolina lowcountry from roughly 1670 to 1760. Stemming from the colony s pluralistic religious heritage and all of them equally expressions of a desire for religious reform, these efforts constituted an important first step in the process by which evangelical Christianity eventually came to dominate southern religion. As we shall see, the rise of evangelical Christianity in colonial South Carolina was shepherded in by a diverse group of hitherto obscure and half-forgotten people, people who came from both the Old World and the New. It reached a climax in what Pietist leader John Tobler described for a Swiss almanac as a great awakening. 3 And, of even greater, long-term significance, it foundationally shaped the evolution of organized Christianity in the Lower South.
This polyethnic region, comprising southern North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and, after 1763, East and West Florida, was not only one of the most dynamic regions in eighteenth-century colonial British America but also an area of intense geopolitical rivalry involving England, France, Spain, and America s native population. 4 What is more, by the late colonial period the Lower South in general and South Carolina in particular were societies with tremendous wealth, an extraordinarily large African American slave population, and a strong tradition of religious revivalism and pluralistic religious expression. In his lengthy account of religion in South Carolina, the economic and cultural center of the lower southern colonies, John Tobler described a bewildering array of European religious groups including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians, and, of course, the Pietists. Halfway through his description, as he turned his attention to the Seventh Day Baptists and the Church of the Brethren (or Dunkards ), the New Windsor mathematician publicly wondered, And who could enumerate all the religions? 5
Its dynamism, diversity, and geopolitical importance notwithstanding, the Lower South has unfortunately not received the same scholarly attention as most other areas of colonial British American settlement, particularly with regard to the study of religion. Since the 1960s there has been a fairly steady stream of scholarly articles exploring various aspects of religion in the colonial lower southern colonies, and there are insightful chapters on these colonies prerevolutionary religious history in several important books by such scholars as Jon Butler, Thomas S. Kidd, and Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood. 6 Yet except for S. Charles Bolton s comprehensive Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina (1982), Daniel B. Thorpe s important study The Moravian Community in Colonial North Carolina: Pluralism on the Southern Frontier (1995), and, more recently, Nicholas M. Beasley s imaginative analysis of liturgical Christianity in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650-1780 (2009), there has been remarkably little serious study of religion in the Lower South. 7
By studying the origins and evolution of evangelical Christianity in colonial South Carolina this book focuses attention on a neglected aspect of the Lower South s religious history that is vitally important for achieving a fuller understanding of the region s complex religious past. In addition, it moves the religious history of the Lower South more fully into the mainstream of early American and Atlantic historiography by showing how South Carolina revivalism developed along the same lines as revivalism in the northern colonies, grew out of both local and continental forces, and was directly linked to the international history of the early modern era. These are especially important contributions because even more than the written history of religion in the Lower South region as a whole, the literature on colonial South Carolina revivalism is unusually thin and sporadic when compared to that of colonies in other regions of British America. Moreover, those works which do presently exist have unfortunately not had a significant scholarly impact. As a result historians have often simply assumed that religious revival had less effect in South Carolina than in any other mainland colony. In the main this is true of historians whose interests lay in social, political, and economic history as well as of those who have specialized in intellectual and cultural themes. Even scholars of colonial South Carolina s religious history have sometimes tended to minimize the impact of revivalism in the colony, partly because of the poverty of scholarship, partly because of a certain habituation, partly for other reasons. In stressing that the Church of England was a major cultural force in South Carolina, for instance, S. Charles Bolton asserted that the Great Awakening had few lasting effects in the low country, though he earlier did acknowledge that it remained a permanent influence. In particular, Bolton observed, the South Carolina Gazette continued to carry debates about Whitefield, an Anglican school for Negroes came into existence, stimulated in part by the need to compete with Whitefield s good works, and evangelical ministers began to enter the province. 8
While readily agreeing with Bolton s main point about the cultural importance of the Anglican church in eighteenth-century South Carolina, the present book vigorously disputes his commonplace notion that the Great Awakening made little lasting impact on the colony, arguing instead that evangelical revivalism of a wide swath ended up counting for a great deal. For example, it describes the religious experiences of a substantial number of men and women from every social order who were increasingly taken with revivalistic Christianity, including such well-known social figures as Henry Laurens, who, the North Carolina Moravians declared, had been awakened by Whit[e]field. 9 It also points out that the Great Awakening reinvigorated the colony s dissenting major