The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism

Religious Revivalism in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1760

Thomas J. Little

• Éditeur: University of South Carolina Press
• Année: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781611172751
• Sujet: Théologie et religion
• Sous-sujet: Histoire des religions

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.

1

Libertines, Sectaries, and Enthusiasts

The Formation of an Evangelical Tradition

The People here, generally speaking, are the Vilest race of Men upon the Earth they have neither honour, nor honesty nor Religion enough to entitle them to any tolerable Character, being a perfect Medley or Hotch potch made up of Bank[r]upts, pirates, decayed Libertines, Sectaries and Enthusiasts of all sorts who have transported themselves hither from Bermudas, Jamaica, Barbados, Montserat, Antego, Nevio, New England, Pensylvania & c; and are the most factious and Seditious people in the whole World. Many of those that pretend to be Churchmen are strangely cripled in their goings between the Church and Presbytery, and as they are of large and loose principles so they live and Act accordingly, sometimes going openly with the Dissenters … against the Church.

Carolina commissary Gideon Johnston to the
bishop of Sarum [Salisbury], September 20, 1708

Colonial South Carolina had a stronger evangelical background than historians have traditionally recognized. Most of the colony’s early settlers were Protestant dissenters, and most South Carolina Anglicans had deep reformed convictions, being “actually Joyned and linked with the Dissenters.”¹ At the turn of the eighteenth century, when the colony’s European population numbered about 3,250, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, French Huguenots, Baptists, and Quakers counted more than ten times as many congregations as Anglicans.² At the same time South Carolina Anglicans were pressing their ministers “to baptize their Children without Godfathers and God Mothers and the Sign of the Cross,” demanding that they preach and pray extemporaneously, and—worse—asking them, “What has the Bp [of] London … to do with us?” In fact, Commissary Gideon Johnston, the bishop of London’s agent in South Carolina (1708–1716), frequently commented on the reforming temperament of his South Carolina parishioners. In his “long and Tedious Letter” of September 20, 1708, to Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, for instance, he spoke of the ease with which they moved from one church to another, contemning the strange cripplings “half faced Churchmen” displayed in their comings and goings “between Church and Presbytery.” He also spoke about their unprecedented (mis)use of the holy sacraments and dilated at length on the “large and loose principles” informing such behavior, not to mention the “ill usage” he met with from the colonists, especially the Protestant reformers and fanatics—the “Libertines, Sectaries, and Enthusiasts of all sorts.”³

During the seventeenth century a heterogeneous mixture of Protestant dissenters flooded into the South Carolina lowcountry, helping to give distinctive shape to a unique New World society in the Atlantic basin. Very early, the Carolina proprietors sought to recruit nonconformists to the colony by granting freedom of religion and liberty of conscience, a policy that was later codified in the Fundamental Constitutions (1669) and encouraged many pioneer settlers to immigrate. Virtually all had economic as well as religious reasons for coming, of course, and from one perspective there are certainly some grounds to suggest, as historian Peter A. Coclanis has written, “that the desire for greater economic opportunity, the quest for material gain, was to Carolina’s early immigrants the most important factor by far in their decisions to settle in the colony.”⁴ Nevertheless it remains true that many early immigrants moved to the colony in search of religious freedom. In 1697, for example, a provincial law stated that “several of the present Inhabitants of this Country [that is, a great many] did transport themselves into this Province in hopes of enjoying the Liberty of their Consciences according to their own Persuasions, which the Royal King Charles the Second … was pleased to impower the Lords Proprietors of this Province to grant to the Inhabitants of this Province, for to encourage the settlement of the same.”⁵ Similarly, when Anglicans later sought to secure legal establishment for their church in 1704, South Carolina dissenters protested to the House of Lords on the grounds that after the restoration of Charles II “and the re-establishment of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, many of the subjects of this kingdom, who were so un-happy as to have some scruples about conforming to the rites of the said church, did transplant themselves and families into the … colony, by means whereof the greatest part of the inhabitants there were Protestant dissenters from the Church of England.”⁶

Early South Carolinians were an extremely “factious and Seditious people.”⁷ Throughout much of the seventeenth century an Anglican faction known as the Goose Creek Men, comprising mostly immigrants from Barbados and some “high church” English Episcopalians, engaged in a tug of war for control of the colony’s government with a dissenting faction, which included several dissident Anglicans who were generally sympathetic to nonconformists and who, like their dissenting allies, tended to support the proprietary regime. (For the late-seventeenth century, the term “high church” Episcopalian may be briefly defined as an adherent of the Church of England who advocated an episcopal form of church government and placed emphasis on complete adherence to the established church position, including the liturgy of the 1662 Prayer Book.) In 1694, after a protracted struggle that involved an open challenge to proprietary authority, a declaration of martial law, and the overthrow of a governor, James Colleton, a spirit of compromise prevailed. In the last years of the century, with dissenters securely at the helm South Carolina entered into a period of peace and prosperity.⁸ The economy grew; Anglicans and dissenters cooperated to establish an Anglican ministry; and, as one Protestant dissenter put it a few years later, “all the inhabitants … lived in great peace.”⁹ Gone, at least for a moment, was the vicious factionalism that had led to the overthrow of Governor Colleton.

It was in the middle and late 1690s that substantial numbers of New England settlers began to arrive in the colony. Along with earlier emigrants from the region, including a group of Baptists from Kittery, Maine, they swelled South Carolina’s non-Anglican population, probably by no fewer than five hundred people. Adding considerable strength to the colony’s seventeenth-century background of religious nonconformity and sectarian dissent, these new migrations forwarded an “infant Reformation” begun in 1670, when South Carolina’s earliest Protestant comers vicariously struggled to countenance “the Arke of God.”¹⁰ Perhaps most important, they gave rise to episodes of both individual and collective spiritual excitement as New England ministers embarked on an energetic program of experiential conversion work. Yet also important, they helped set the stage for the advance toward later evangelical awakenings as well as a much more forceful confrontation in the political arena over the legal establishment of the Church of England.

Hoping to establish “an ample Colony” of English subjects along the southeast coast of North America, the eight men to whom Charles II granted Carolina on March 24, 1663, professed not only material but also religious inspiration when they “humbly besought” a royal charter, the eight, in the words of the charter, “being excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian Faith and the enlargement of our Empire and Dominions … in the parts of AMERICA not yet cultivated or planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous People, who have no knowledge of Almighty God.” All adhered firmly to the Anglican church and quite naturally believed that they might effect this “pious and noble purpose” by establishing a staple-producing agricultural colony in the New World, as all imagined that Christian missionizing—the preaching and propagation of the Christian gospel—would accompany English settlement of the region, no less than mercantile profits.¹¹

To encourage such settlement while at the same time minimizing their investment in the transatlantic imperial venture, the proprietors, being enterprising Protestants, hoped to recruit seasoned English colonists who would settle at their own expense. Consequently they sought to attract colonists from New England, the Chesapeake, and the Atlantic and Caribbean islands by offering land on liberal terms, promising representative self-government, and granting liberty of conscience to all would-be adventurers, for under the charter they enjoyed broad discretionary powers concerning ecclesiastical matters—“and in as ample a manner as any Bishop of Durham … ever … enjoyed.” These included the patronage and power to license the organization and building of all churches and “to cause them to be Dedicated and Consecrated according to the Ecclesiastical Laws of our Kingdom of England.” They also included the power to safeguard the liberty of persons who stood outside the Restoration church, one of the chief distinguishing features of the Carolina charter. Using their influence at court, the proprietors won important concessions from Charles II in this regard, despite the fact that the crown was facing domestic pressure from the Cavalier Parliament (which was dominated by Episcopalian MPs) and the bench of bishops to curb the strength of English nonconformity. Specifically they won “full and free License, liberty, and Authority, by such legal ways and means as they shall think fit” to grant reasonable “Indulgences and Dispensations” to any “Person and Persons, inhabiting and being within the said Province … Who really in their Judgments, and for Conscience sake, cannot or shall not Conform … to the Public Exercise of Religion, according to the Liturgy, forms and Ceremonies of the Church of England, or take and subscribe the Oaths and Articles made and established in that behalf.”¹²

Having secured such authority, the Lords Proprietors included an extraordinary provision in “A Declaration and Proposal to all that will Plant in Carolina,” an informal plan of government that was drafted shortly after the royal charter was granted, the king sharing their “pious and good intention for the propagation of the Christian faith amongst the barbarous and ignorant Indians.” Not only does it reveal one of the principal ways in which the proprietors hoped to recruit settlers to develop their colony, but it also speaks directly to their religious commitments. “We will grant, in as ample manner as the undertakers shall desire,” the provision in the August 25, 1663, Declaration and Proposal states, “freedom and liberty of conscience in all religious or spiritual things, and to be kept inviolably with them, we having power in our charter so to do.”¹³ Whether the provision was written as a specific overture to New England Puritans (which seems likely, as a group of Massachusetts Bay colonists had already attempted to settle in Carolina) or whether it simply represents a general policy statement remains somewhat unclear.¹⁴ But the Declaration and Proposal’s religious provision proved to be precedent-setting nevertheless. Furthermore, even if the provision represents a generic policy statement, it stands in vivid contrast to the ecclesiastical spirit prevailing in England at the time. Following the restoration of Charles II, Parliament passed a series of four statutes designed to strengthen the position of the episcopal Church of England. Known collectively as the Clarendon Code, they were named after Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor and one of the eight Carolina proprietors. The Corporation Act (1661) excluded nonconformists from municipal office. The Act of Uniformity (1662) provided for the issuance of a new Book of Common Prayer and required all clergy to affirm it publicly or resign. The Conventicle Act (1664) forbade dissenting religious services, while the Five Mile Act (1665) prohibited nonconforming ministers who refused to subscribe to the new prayer book from coming within five miles of a town or parish where they had held their livings. As the king’s chief minister, Clarendon enforced the measures, though as the Declaration and Proposal would suggest, he was personally disposed to be tolerant and disapproved of their passage.¹⁵

In the face of this growing body of legislation, the Lords Proprietors reaffirmed their commitment to freedom and toleration in “The Concessions and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors,” an important statement of settlement conditions issued on January 7, 1665. Significantly, the Concessions and Agreement added to the proprietors’ earlier religious assurances, with the most important additions being outlined in a “General clause of Liberty of Conscience.” The clause provided that no one would “be any ways molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for any differences in opinion or practice in matters of religious Concernment” and that all would “freely and fully have and enjoy his and their Judgements and Consciences in matters of religion.” What is more, the proprietors vowed in a subsequent clause not to use their right of patronage and power of advowson (that is, the power of presenting a nominee to an ecclesiastical benefice) to infringe upon people’s consciences and, further, granted provincial representatives the “power, by act, to constitute and appoint such and so many Ministers or Preachers as they shall think fit, and to establish their maintenance, Giving Liberty besides to any person or persons to keep and maintain what preachers or Ministers they please.”¹⁶ Here the evidence is more than suggestive: in these early years the proprietors believed that their colony would be inhabited by a substantial number of New Englanders. “We have … indeavoured to comprehend all Interests,” they wrote of the Concessions and Agreement, “especially that of New England from whence the greatest stocke of people will in probability come.” There were many other potential peopling fields, of course, especially Barbados, where the sugar revolution of the 1640s had persuaded many islanders to emigrate and where interest in settling a provision-growing colony on the North American mainland was widespread. However, the proprietors seem to have focused their early recruiting efforts not on the West Indies but on New England, supposing that relatively few people would leave the sugar islands for Carolina, “our more southerne plantations being already much drayned.”¹⁷ The second royal charter of June 30, 1665, tends to confirm that the English proprietors of Carolina hoped New England might become a major recruiting ground for the settlement of their colony in America. Whereas the first charter comprehended punishment for anyone who might “scandalize or reproach” the “Liturgy, forms, and Ceremonies” of the established church without specifying conditions of nonconformity and religious dissent, the second charter explicitly guaranteed protection for prospective settlers’ different opinions concerning religious matters, English laws “to the contrary hereof, in any-wise, notwithstanding.” Such specific legal protection provides further evidence that the proprietors secured additional rights for dissenting Protestants contemplating removal, particularly the New England Puritans they spoke of with regard to the Concessions and Agreement (which was undoubtedly the source of the 1665 charter language).¹⁸ Theirs was to be a colony of wide religious tolerance, and they persuaded Charles II to concede just that, which is all the more striking given the hatred and fear of nonconformity in Restoration England. For example, a 1666 promotional tract printed in London for Robert Horne extolling the benefits of settling in Carolina cited “full and free Liberty of Conscience” as one of “the chief and Fundamental privileges” offered in the new colony, and it was listed with ordinal priority, first. “No man,” Horne’s Brief Description of the Province of Carolina states, “is to be molested or called in question for matters of Religious Concern; but every one to be obedient to the Civil Government, worshiping God after their own way.”¹⁹ Other early promotional papers describing Carolina, such as Samuel Wilson’s An Account of the Province of Carolina (1682), continued holding up this chief privilege.

Taking into account the royal charters, the 1663 Declaration and Proposal, and the 1665 Concessions and Agreement serves to illuminate the central premise underpinning the religious provisions of the Fundamental Constitutions, a r...