Flint River Baptist Church established in 1808 (first documented Baptist church in state).
Methodist camp meeting established in 1813 at Fort Easley (Wood's Bluff) and in 1820 at Ebenezar Camp Ground near Montevallo.
Alabama Baptist State Convention met for the first time in 1823 near Greensboro.
Alabama Methodist Conference organized in 1832.
In 1844 state Methodists passed resolutions calling for "peaceable secession," leading partly to formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Also in 1844 the Alabama Baptist State Convention passed the "Alabama Resolutions," affirming rights of slaveholders to serve as missionaries (led to 1845 formation of Southern Baptist Convention).
Major leaders:
Rev. Lorenzo Dow—earliest recorded Protestant preacher on Alabama frontier. Preached across Tombigbee Valley between 1803 and 1812. Loosely associated with Methodists.
Rev. James W. Faris—electrifying Methodist revival preacher in Tennessee Valley during early antebellum period.
Rev. Alexander Travis—pioneer Baptist preacher in south Alabama.
Rev. Basil Manly—Baptist preacher, president of University of Alabama, and major state denominational figure.
Rev. Caesar Blackwell—Baptist slave preacher, 1827-1845, and one of the most influential African-American religious leaders.
Rev. Nathan Ashby—In 1868 Ashby became president of the newly organized Colored Baptist State Convention and a decade later he helped organize the National Baptist Convention, which became the largest African-American denomination in the U.S.
Statistics:
By 1860 Methodists and Baptists each counted some 60,000 church members, black and white. By 1900 Alabama church membership was 97 percent Protestant, with Baptists and Methodists in first and second place (46.2 percent and 43.4 percent), although their churches were divided into separate black and white groups after the Civil War.
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