A History of American ChristianityBacon, Leonard Woolsey
Religion
A History of American Christianity
Bacon, Leonard Woolsey
United States -- Church history; United States -- Religion
South Carolina, on the other hand, was settled direct from Europe, first
by cargoes of emigrants shipped on speculation by the great real-estate
"operators" who had at heart not only the creation of a gorgeous
aristocracy in the West, but also the realization of fat dividends on
their heavy ventures. Members of the dominant politico-religious party
in England were attracted to a country in which they were still to be
regarded before the law as of the "only true and orthodox" church; and
religious dissenters gladly accepted the offer of toleration and
freedom, even without the assurance of equality. One of the most notable
contributions to the new colony was a company of dissenters from
Somersetshire, led by Joseph Blake, brother to Cromwell's illustrious
admiral. Among these were some of the earliest American Baptists; and
there is clear evidence of connection between their arrival and the
coming, in 1684, of a Baptist church from the Massachusetts Colony,
under the pastorate of William Screven. This planting was destined to
have an important influence both on the religious and on the civil
history of the colony. Very early there came two ship-loads of Dutch
Calvinists from New York, dissatisfied with the domineering of their
English victors. But more important than the rest was that sudden
outflow of French Huguenots, representing not only religious fidelity
and devotion, but all those personal and social virtues that most
strengthen the foundations of a state, which set westward upon the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. This, with the later influx
of the Scotch-Irish, profoundly marked the character of South Carolina.
The great names in her history are generally either French or Scotch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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