Religion
Numerous churches built bases in Charleston, and expanded into the rural areas, including Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Lutherans. Catholics and Jews built their churches in Charleston. The Baptists and Methodists appeared in the late 18th century, and grew rapidly, attracting many slaves. The Scotch-Irish in the Backcountry were Presbyterians, and the wealthy planters in the Lowcountry were English Anglicans. They had many disputes over politics and economic policy, but seldom fought over religion. The different churches recognized and supported each other, building the colony into a pluralist and tolerant society.
The highly successful preaching tour of evangelist George Whitefield in 1740 ignited a religious revival—called the First Great Awakening—which energized evangelical Protestants. They expanded their membership among the white farmers, as women were especially active in the small Methodist and Baptist churches that were springing up everywhere. The evangelicals worked hard to convert the slaves to Christianity and were especially successful among black women, who played the role of religious specialists in Africa and again in America. Slave women exercised wide-ranging spiritual leadership among Africans in America in healing and medicine, church discipline, and revivalistic enthusiasm.
Read more about this topic: Colonial Period Of South Carolina
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Where beauty is worshipped for beauty’s sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement—that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it—that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Those to whom God has imparted religion by feeling of the heart are very fortunate and are rightly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give it by feeling of the heart—without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)