Down to the end of the seventeenth century the official church in North Carolina gave no sign of life.

In South Carolina almost twenty years passed before it was represented by a single clergyman.

The first manifestation of church life seems to have been in the meetings on the banks of the Cooper and the Santee, in which the French refugees worshiped their fathers' God with the psalms of Marot and Beza.
But with the eighteenth century begins a better era for the English church in the Carolinas.

The story of the founding and the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, taken in connection with its antecedents and its results, belongs to this history, not only as showing the influence of European Christianity upon America, but also as indicating the reaction of America upon Europe.
In an important sense the organization of religious societies which is characteristic of modern Christendom is of American origin.

The labors of John Eliot among the Indians of New England stirred so deep an interest in the hearts of English Christians that in 1649 an ordinance was passed by the Long Parliament creating a corporation to be called "The President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England"; and a general collection made under Cromwell's direction produced nearly twelve thousand pounds, from the income of which missionaries were maintained among some of the Northern tribes of Indians.