Shubal Stearns and Sandy Creek Baptist Church

Founded by Shubal Stearns, in 1755, Sandy Creek Baptist Church is located at 4765 Sandy Creek Church Road, Liberty. Stearns’s obelisk tombstone stands in the church cemetery. Historical monuments on the grounds provide fascinating glimpses into the Sandy Creek heritage. The year 2005 marked the 250th anniversary of Stearns’s organization of the church. In 2015, Sandy Creek Baptist erected a new, picturesque church, situated next door to an 1802 log meetinghouse (owned and used for many years by Primitive Baptists). A short distance from the site, a historical marker, at the intersection of Ramseur Julian Road and Old Liberty Road, describes Sandy Creek as the “Mother of Separate Baptist churches across the South.” (See Chapter 15.).

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

Featured Image Credit: Reformation. Backwoods North Carolina Anabaptists/Revivalists Rebel Against Crown and Anglicanism: 1771. reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2012/07/backwoods-north-carolina.html.