Historic Baptist church gets new awakening

Baptist churches down South are known for fire-licking calls to sinners to get saved.

But today in the Lowcountry, one Baptist church has reached out to save another from the sinking sands of time.

The action by the Red Dam Baptist Church of Hardeeville to revive the Euhaw Baptist Church of Grahamville could end up saving one of this area’s most historic institutions.

Euhaw Baptist dates to 1686 and is the second oldest Baptist organization in the South, according to the historic marker outside its white spires along Bees Creek Road near Ridgeland.

It is the mother church of the Baptist movement in this region. This predates the American Revolution, but helped inspire the concept by breaking away from the Church of England.

For years, its mentor was George Whitefield, a pillar of the Great Awakening and the Billy Graham of Colonial times. When its spacious building in Jasper County was dedicated in 1752, Whitefield did the preaching.

The first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. William B. Johnson, began his ministry at Euhaw and was ordained there.

The church migrated here from Edisto Island in 1737, settling in the vicinity of Euhaw Creek, near Coosawhatchie and the community along the road to Interstate 95 that we know as Old House. It’s hard to picture this rural setting ever having a church building that seated 1,000, most of them slaves.

That old edifice is long gone.

And the congregation was itself almost long gone. Attendance had slipped to one family meeting in a former pastor’s home.

Euhaw Baptist needed to be saved.

‘Closer to God’

The church was the center of society when it moved with the planters to the summer resort of Grahamville in the antebellum years.

At times it was used as a schoolhouse.

Grace Fox Perry wrote in “The Moving Finger of Jasper” that it once had a youthful teacher named James L. Petigru.

He went on to become a lawyer and Unionist in Charleston. His famous line in a speech to a group of secessionists is often quoted today: “South Carolina is too small to be a Republic, and too large to be an insane asylum.”

When the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity was founded in Grahamville in 1834, “a friendly rivalry developed between the two congregations of neighbors, friends and relatives,” according to “The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Volume I.”

“Mrs. E.R. Schoolcraft, author of ‘The Black Gauntlet,’ was raised as a Baptist in Grahamville and recalled being taught that the Baptists were closer to God because their prayers came from the heart and not from a book.”

Pastor William B. Johnson spoke of the “Baptist aversion for all creeds but the Bible.” The lack of formal ritual often drew criticism for the Baptists.

But the Euhaw church’s influence was felt throughout the Lowcountry.

It survived the Revolutionary and Civil wars, and more than one fire. Its first sanctuary in Grahamville burned in 1904, and the old building that now needs repair replaced it two years later.

‘Relaunch’

The Rev. Kevin Crosby and his Red Dam Baptist Church intervened this spring.

“We wanted to restart it,” he said. “Relaunch it. We’re trying to bring it back to life. We want to preserve all that history.”

Red Dam Baptist is a growing church in a growing community bolstered by Sun City Hilton Head and the Bluffton boom. It has taken Euhaw Baptist under its wings as a mission and as a way to relieve pressure on its home facilities and services. Since March, Crosby has preached each Sunday at both churches.

A couple from Red Dam has moved into the Euhaw Baptist manse on the 6.5-acre tract now known as the Euhaw Campus of Red Dam Baptist Church. Last week, the private Legacy Christian Academy began using church facilities “to put life in the building more than anything,” Crosby said.

An Easter Egg Hunt, Vacation Bible School and a concert on the grounds have helped start the slow process of a community taking back its historic church.

“We’ve gone at it slowly,” Crosby said. Sunday attendance is running around 60, he said, and it will have a campus minister next month.

“The ultimate goal is for it to be a self-sustaining church,” Crosby said. “We realize that may be a five-year commitment.”

Surely George Whitefield, who breathed life into Euhaw Baptist 250 years ago, would be pleased with Crosby’s statement about saving sinners.

“Some may be asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’ The answer is real simple. Our purpose at Red Dam Baptist Church is to develop followers of Jesus Christ. This is who we are, and that is what we do.”

This story was originally published August 24, 2015 at 8:01 PM with the headline "Historic Baptist church gets new awakening."