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:
“Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment.”
—Michel Guillaume Jean De Crevecoeur (1735–1813)