You have heard of the New Lights for years, probably without even knowing it. They have a township named after them in the very northern portion of Wake County. While the name sounds kind of shimmery and new agey, the New Lights have a history that extends back in Wake County beyond the Revolution.
The New Lights were Baptists that migrated to North Carolina in the 1750's during the Great Awakening - a series of religious revivals in American Christian history. They were Baptists, but not Calvinists. They believed in a more personal connection to God, that God "brought new Light into their lives through their emotional conversion experiences", and that their fate was not preordained but dependent on their connection to God and their good deeds. They were also know as Separatist Baptists.
The New Lights established the first Baptist church in Wake County in 1775 and built their community around it. Their community grew and thrived through the l880's. Two gristmills and three general stores kept their community clothed and fed and their economy humming.
Not all in the larger community, approved of their industry and independent religious spirit. Charles Woodmason, a pre-Revolutionary Anglican itinerant preacher was a loud critic of the New Lights and viewed them as an "infestation." A staunch believer in church-guided worship and governance, he felt that these "enthusiasts" were an unruly bunch led by an indwelling Holy Spirit to defy the order of organized religion. Woodson spent years traveling thousands of miles around provincial North Carolina preaching the "evils" of the New Lights.
Never the less, the New Lights persisted into the 1880s in northern Wake County working, thriving and following their Light. They left behind church record books for the years 1807-1834 that are archived at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. These records may be downloaded to view.
Today we remember New Light by its quaint name on our maps, but the history of the New Lights is so much richer.
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