The Abundant Life Prevails: Religious Traditions of Saint Helena Island

349 Pages·2000·0.87 MB·English

by  Michael C Wolfe

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.