What Was the Religion in the South Carolina Colony?
There was no predominant religion in colonial South Carolina. The three main religious groups were the French Huguenots, the Anglicans and the dissenters from the Church of England called the non-conformists. Until the early 1700s, there was religious freedom in the colony.
The South Carolina colony, founded in 1633 by eight English nobles with a Royal Charter from King Charles II, was one of the original 13 colonies of pre-Revolutionary America. It was classified as part of the Southern Colonies and existed as an English settlement from 1663 until 1776. The original name of the colony was the Province of South Carolina, which was later renamed to just South Carolina.
Although there was an established Anglican Church in colonial South Carolina, there was much religious diversity. The first dissenters from the Church of England were the Presbyterians. In 1680, they created the Independent or Circular Church in Charleston. The Huguenots or the French Protestants arrived in the colony in 1680, followed by the Swiss and German Lutherans in 1730. The Baptists, Quakers and Anabaptists were among the pioneering settlers in South Carolina. The Baptists were already established in the colony by 1670, the Methodists by the 1770s and the Jewish by 1749.
