In his equally delightful and informative book, The Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware, Christopher Ward suggests that American history might have turned out differently if stormy weather had not driven the Mayflower off its course and thus landed the Pilgrims north of Cape Cod instead of in Delaware Bay. “Speculations,” Ward writes, “as to the effect of a kindlier climate, a more generous soil, upon the character of the English immigrants, of the Puritans, who followed them, and of their descendants—could lead to divers conclusions. One thing is certain however; if the Pilgrim Fathers had spent that first winter in Delaware Bay, they would have had a better time.”

The Negro church presents an important field of investigation to students of American social history. Many slaves found in Christianity a substitute for primitive African religious beliefs and practices and a source for the satisfaction of their religious longings. The churches offered to the American Negro his first opportunities for participation in organized group life in a new environment. Experience in church organization and activity trained thousands of slaves for the larger fields of effort which were opened to them after emancipation. Approximately one-tenth of the present total membership of the American churches belongs to this race. For more than three centuries the church has served as the most important factor in typing the institutions and ideals of our largest minority racial group.

Georgia in the revolutionary period, not unlike many other provinces along the American seaboard, lacked social solidarity and unity. The lack was not the result of great ethnic diversity alone or of the disharmony arising from economic inequalities and political disagreement. To racial variety and divergences attributable to economic and political conditions were added many differences in customs and modes of living and in traditional thought which could be ascribed, in part at least, to the numerous religious sects attracted to the province by the liberal provisions of its charter. The religious conflicts of the period are best seen in the struggle over the establishment of the Church of England and in the relations of the dissenters with the civil government and with the religious establishment. The question of external ecclesiastical control, issues and grievances of a religious nature which appeared in the revolutionary argument, and the alignment of the sects on the question of open conflict with Great Britain, are interesting and important aspects of the whole religious situation. It is with these phases of the religious history of Georgia during two decades that this study is largely concerned.

It was the long-established custom of the Alexandrian patriarch to write each year a paschal letter to the faithful of his province. In the letter of the year 399 the Patriarch Theophilus, an ecclesiastic of great ability but few scruples, inveighed rather severely against those who taught that God was corporeal, or in other words that God had bodily form. This opinion was by no means extraordinary. For over two centuries Alexandria had been the leading center of Christian theology, and for a much longer period a pre-eminent seat of philosophic learning as well. The repudiation of anthropomorphic conceptions of God had long been a matter of common acceptance by pagan and Christian theologians alike who laid any claim to a liberal education.