The Delayed Coming of Religion

• Many years passed in the colony before ministers or missionaries from any religion braved the new frontier of the Carolinas. In fact, the pioneer North Carolina settlers probably lived in the colony some 20 years before they heard their first sermon. The first ministers that attempted to teach the settlers religious practices were Quakers.
  
  

Quakers

• The Quaker ministers, including Williams Edmundson and the notable George Fox, were successful in converting the North Carolina colonists and founded a Society of Friends (the Quaker denomination) church there by 1678. The Quaker denomination continued in popularity until the Revolutionary War when many converts stepped away from its teaching of passivity and requirements of marrying within the denomination.
  
  

The Anglican Church

• The Anglican Church, the state church of England, established its presence in North Carolina as well. However, dissenters rose up against the church because they disliked the centralized state religion and the paying of taxes to support it. The Anglican Church was distant from the colonists, with sometimes few or no ministers actually residing in the colony. The Anglican Church virtually disappeared after the Revolutionary War because of its direct ties to England.
  
  

Reformed, Lutherans and Presbyterians

• These religious denominations sprang up mostly within their respective ethnic groups. The Germans gravitated towards the Reformed and Lutheran churches, and the two denominations were somewhat united both in creed and in physical assembly. The Scottish Highlanders and Scots-Irish colonists primarily attended the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterians eventually scattered throughout the colony following the Revolutionary War.
  
  

Baptists

• Even though the Baptists appeared in North Carolina as early as 1695, they did not formally organize until 1727. The Baptists gained membership across the colony but particularly focused in the central region called the Piedmont. By the Revolutionary War, every county in North Carolina had at least one Baptist church and the members began to hold public office.
  
  

Methodists, Catholics and Jews

• It was not until 1772 that an English Methodist minister arrived in the North Carolina colony. The Methodist denomination did gain popularity as its ministers preached revivals in traveling circuits across the colony. The Methodist Church did not formally organize in the United States until 1784. Some historical accounts also make mention of Catholics and Jews living in the colony early on, but evidence of their lifestyles is sparse. These groups did not build permanent assembly places in the colony until the 1800s.