The material word: Anglican visual culture in colonial South Carolina

Through a careful analysis of both material evidence and diverse primary texts, this dissertation examines church architecture, gravestones, and communion vessels as a document of “lived religion.” By using the modifier “lived,” I mean to emphasize the material choices made by the laity that collectively reflect the impact of belief on the lives of individuals and communities. In six chapters, the narrative addresses such themes as regional identity, the social politics of established church architecture, and Anglican theologies of the sacred.; In the first chapter, a comparative analysis of the Anglican architecture of eighteenth-century South Carolina and that of its Caribbean cousin Jamaica highlights the central role of regionalism in provincial architecture, even in the architecture of the establishment. The next chapter examines the complicated process of constructing churches designed by a lay committee and erected by both master craftsmen and day laborers. A chapter on Anglican “regularity” interprets architectural classicism as a visualization of liturgical worship by Anglicans in light of the threat of evangelical individualism. It also examines the ways that monumental construction and pew plans were used by Anglicans to establish their place in South Carolina's political and social landscapes. A chapter dedicated to the sacred uses gravestones and the subtleties of church ornament to illustrate Anglican ideas on death, eternity, the sovereignty of God, and the nature of the Church. As a conclusion, the final chapter moves the discussion of these subjects past the American Revolution, after the dis-establishment of the Anglican Church in South Carolina.; In terms of scope, this dissertation has expanded the discourse on colonial American architecture to include the Caribbean and has encouraged greater nuance in the discussion of religion in the field of early American visual culture. It has demonstrated the value of architecture as a primary document in the writing of colonial American religious history and it engages an architectural history that depends on a thick description of the immediate religious, social, and political context. In that way, “The Material Word” has demonstrated the value of architecture in the examination of “lived religion.”...