Mobility, Migration, and the Development of Evangelical Protestantism in the Eighteenth-Century Southern Anglophone World

Thomas J. Little

The movement of people was basic to the development of evangelicalism in the early modern Atlantic world, yet relatively scant attention has been given to the interconnections between the peopling process and the lively trafficking of vital religious ideas, especially in the lower southern colonies of British North America. In an effort to redress this lacuna in the scholarship, this essay examines the development of evangelicalism in the Lower South during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. It demonstrates that mobility and migration served as the main vehicles for the transmission of vital religious ideas and helped to create social conditions conducive to the acceptance and internalization of evangelical values.

[WP #96005]