The Abundant Life Prevails: Religious Traditions of Saint Helena Island PDF
Preview The Abundant Life Prevails: Religious Traditions of Saint Helena Island
The Abundant Life Prevails : Religious title: Traditions of Saint Helena Island author: Wolfe, Michael C. publisher: Baylor University isbn10 | asin: 0918954738 print isbn13: 9780918954732 ebook isbn13: 9780585282046 language: English Saint Helena Island (S.C.)--Church history, subject Penn Center of the Sea Islands--History, Saint Helena Island (S.C.)--Religion. publication date: 2000 lcc: BR555.S6W65 2000eb ddc: 277.57/99 Saint Helena Island (S.C.)--Church history, Penn Center of the Sea Islands--History, subject: Saint Helena Island (S.C.)--Religion. Page i The Abundant Life Prevails Religious Traditions of Saint Helena Island Michael C. Wolfe Page ii Copyright © 2000 by Baylor University Press Waco, Texas 76798 All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wolfe, Michael C. The abundant life prevails : religious traditions of Saint Helena Island / Michael C. Wolfe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-918954-73-8 (alk. paper) 1. Saint Helena Island (S.C)Church history. 2. Penn Center of the Sea IslandsHistory. 3. Saint Helena Island (S.C.)Religion. I. Title. BR555.S6 W65 2000 277.57'99dc21 99-50591 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Page iii Contents Preface v 1 1 Antebellum Days 2 13 First Days Amongst the Contrabands 3 37 The Islanders, 18611900 4 61 The Mission Expands 5 73 The Abundant Life Arrives 6 91 The Faith of an Island 7 99 The End of the School 8 107 Penn Center: The Little Foe of All the World, 19501970 9 123 Heritage Days Notes 133 Bibliography 167 Index 183 Page v Preface: Another Look at Saint Helena Island I know an island off the South Carolina coast where the Spanish moss hangs from ancient twisted live oak trees and at night the moonlight casts eerie shadows on the narrow oyster shell roads. It is an old place. A European settlement flourished in this area long before the Jamestown or Plymouth colonies. It is a small place, only fifteen miles long and five miles wide, formed by the ocean's ferocity. Through the centuries, tidal erosion and battering hurricanes have broken the Carolina coast into these small islands separated by rivers and tidal inlets. To reach this remote outpost one must cross the Beaufort River and then Cowen Creek. The Beaufort River spans only a thousand feet, placing the island not very far from the mainland; but culturally speaking, in the words of novelist Pat Conroy, "the water is wide" isolating the island and leaving its residents separated from the outside world. 1 The island residents came here long ago as slaves against their will, brought from another island called Bunce, far across the Atlantic in West Africa. Even so, they love their island home on the Carolina coast. They call their island Saint Helena. Since the early twentieth century, numerous writers have given extensive attention to Saint Helena Island, especially its unique linguistic culture called Gullah. Many have been extremely impressed by the unusual religious life of the island. However, until recently, no writer had attempted an interpretation of the religious culture as a primary goal. Margaret Creel's groundbreaking work on antebellum Sea Island religion began this exciting Page vi task, tracing the religious life of the slaves from colonial times through the Civil War. 2 But what happened to these islanders after the war? In 1861 two religious traditions collided on Saint Helena Island. Already firmly entrenched on the island, the slaves' religion represented a mixture of Southern evangelicalism and African practices. The other, newer, tradition would be an imported faith found primarily at the Penn School established for the islanders by Northern missionaries whose Protestantism emphasized citizenship, character development, service, and self-discipline. Saint Helena Island and the Penn School are historically important because they served as a stage on which a "rehearsal for reconstruction" transpired when the area around Beaufort, South Carolina, fell into Union army hands in November, 1861.3 Seeking to prove to a skeptical AmericaNorth and Souththat former slaves could be good, responsible citizens, Northern missionaries funded by the federal government traveled to South Carolina to labor among the newly freed African Americans. Although the Port Royal Experiment collapsed, the Penn School survived into the twentieth century. In 1900, when the school faced financial and leadership problems, the famed Hampton Institute in Virginia began to direct the island school. Again Northern white missionaries arrived to conduct an "experiment" in educational salvation. Focusing on "character development" among the African- American islanders, the Penn School linked hands with a worldwide network of Christian organizations, progressive educators, and government agencies. Changing circumstances brought new crises to Saint Helena after World War II, and the Penn Center became one of the most important focal points of the civil rights movement. To this tiny island, time and again, Martin Luther King, Jr. retreated with his staff to hammer out their hopes for the future. Through the years, Penn evolved into much more than a local private school. Its leaders embraced that most ancient of American Puritan dreams, "the shining city on the hill," and these missionaries came to believe that from their lonely island outpost, led and empowered by God, they could change the world. The story of the "Port Royal Experiment" and the Penn School seriously challenges the American myth of separation of church and state. Furthermore, the Penn School's history sheds enormous light on American ideals of social progressivism and the religious motivations of those ideals. Like so many other social progressives in American history, Penn's leaders were not merely building a better society, they were dreaming of the Kingdom of God on earth.
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