Tennent's Speech on Disestablishment
Law Article on Disestablishment of Anglican Church in SC
Documents Relation to French Protestants in the 1760's pdf
Woodmason sermon calling for unity among protestant sects.
From David Ramsay Hist of SC V. II
THE REV . WILLIAM TENNENT , A. M. Was born in New - Jersey in the year 1740, and educated at the college of Princeton while the Reverend Aaron Burr was its president. His ancestors were distinguished for their learning and piety and ranked high among the earliest promoters of religion and literature in the middle states. After he had preached sometime in Connecticut he was invited to the pastoral charge of the independent church in Charlestown and arrived there in 1772.
As a man of learning, eloquence, and piety, he was in high estimation. While gliding on through life, devoted to study and the discharge of his clerical duties, the American Revolution commenced. He was possessed of too much vigor of mind to be indifferent to this great event. It so thoroughly absorbed all his capacities as to give a new direction to his pursuits. He speedily comprehended in prospect the important changes it was likely to produce and engaged in the support of it with all his energies .
Ardent zeal and distinguished talents made him so popular, that, contrary to the habits and customs of the people, they with general consent elected him a member of the Provincial Congress. In the revolutionary crisis, when the dearest interests of the country were at stake, many things were done which ought not to be drawn into precedent in seasons of ordinary tranquillity. Such was the urgency of public affairs that committees and congresses of the people, then their only legislators, were on pressing emergencies in the habit of meeting on Sundays for the dispatch of public business. In the different hours of the same day, Mr. Tennent was occasionally heard both in his church and the statehouse, addressing different audiences with equal animation on their spiritual and temporal interests. He rarely introduced politics in the pulpit; but from the strain of his preaching and praying it was evident that his whole soul was in the revolution, and that he considered a success in it as intimately connected with the cause of religion, liberty, and human happiness.
He wrote sundry anonymous pieces in the newspapers, stirring up the people to a proper sense of their duty and interest while their liberties were endangered; but printed nothing with his name, except two sermons and a speech delivered in the legislature of South - Carolina on the justice and policy of putting all religious denominations on an equal footing .
In the year 1775, the adherents to the royal government in the backcountry armed themselves and went so far in their opposition to the friends of the revolution, that serious consequences were apprehended. In this crisis, the council of safety sent William Tennent in conjunction with William Henry Drayton to explain to these misled people the nature of the dispute, and to bring them over to cooperation with the other inhabitants. They had public meetings with them in different places. At these, the commissioners of the council of safety made several animated addresses to the disaffected. In this public manner; and in private interviews with their leaders, Mr. Tennent's influence and eloquence, in conjunction with his able coadjutor, were exerted to good purpose in preserving peace and making friends to the new order of things.
Born and educated in a province where there never had been any church establishment, and strongly impressed with the rights of all men to free and equal religious liberty, he could not consent to receive toleration as a legal boon from those whose natural rights were not superior to his own. · He drew up an argumentative petition in favor of equal religious liberty - united the different denominations of dissenters in its support — and procured to it the signature of many thousands. When this petition was made the subject of legislative consideration, he delivered an eloquent and well-reasoned speech in its support. This was well received and carried conviction to the breasts of many that establishments of particular sects of religion were at all times partial, oppressive, and impolitic; but particularly so in a revolutionary struggle when the exertions of all were indispensable to the support of civil liberty. To many well-informed liberal persons, his arguments were unnecessary ; but to others whose minds were less expanded, they were very useful, and contributed to carry through with general consent a reform of the ancient system. His valuable life was terminated in the 37th year of his age at the high hills of Santee while discharging a filial duty in bringing his aged and lately widowed mother from New Jersey to Carolina.
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Papers of Rev. William Tennent (Archive Grid)
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