Sonny Seals

This much anticipated follow-up to the best-selling Historic Rural Churches of Georgia (2016) documents even more rural churches and communities founded prior to 1900 throughout the Peach State. With more than 250 stunning color images, the new volume chronicles the historical, community, religious, and architectural significance of fifty new sites, while simultaneously calling for their historic preservation when possible. The book includes special focus on African American churches pre- and post-Emancipation, with a foreword by Ambassador Andrew Young. In his foreword, Ambassador Young reflects on the central role of the Black church in his life, writing, “As I look back, my experience in these rural church assignments was the basis for my understanding of racial inequality in the South and my deeply held conviction to do something about it. It prepared me for the long struggle that was to come.” In addition to this important foreword, scholars Doug E. Thompson and Noel Leo Erskine add significant historical context in their introductory essay.

Aspects of Georgia’s unique history can only be told through its extant rural churches. As the Georgia backcountry rapidly expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the churches erected on this newly parceled land became the center of community life. These early structures ranged from primitive outbuildings to those with more elaborate designs and were constructed with local, hand-hewn materials to serve the residents who lived nearby. From these rural communities sprang the villages, towns, counties, and cities that informed the way Georgia was organized and governed and that continue to influence the way we live today. Historic Rural Churches of Georgia presents forty-seven early houses of worship from all areas of the state. Nearly three hundred stunning color photographs capture the simple elegance of these sanctuaries and their surrounding grounds and cemeteries. Of the historic churches that have survived, many are now in various states of distress and neglect and require restoration to ensure that they will continue to stand. This book is a project of the Historic Rural Churches of Georgia organization, whose mission is the preservation of historic rural churches across the state and the documentation of their history since their founding. If proper care is taken, these endangered and important landmarks can continue to represent the state’s earliest examples of rural sacred architecture and the communities and traditions they housed.