“Heathens and Infidels”? African Christianization and Anglicanism in the South Carolina Low Country, 1700–1750

In early 1710, a small group of parishioners approached Francis Le Jau, the Anglican missionary to St. James Parish in South Carolina. He recognized them all as regular churchgoers, and he was pleased when they asked him to admit them to Holy Communion. Yet he hesitated, because the men admitted that, having been “born and baptized among the Portuguese,” they were Roman Catholics. Le Jau was always cautious in such cases, he assured church authorities in London. He told the men that he would need them first to renounce “the errors of the Popish Church” before he would allow them the sacrament. He then suggested that they give the matter some thought over the next few months.