The most influential Baptist minister of revolutionary South Carolina, Oliver Hart represents the union of evangelical religion and political rebellion. Born in Westminster Township, Bucks Country, Pennsylvania, to John and Eleanor Crispin Hart, Hart was strongly influenced in his youth by the revivalism of George Whitefield and William and Gilbert Tennent. Though lacking formal education, he acquired a respectable knowledge of the classics, theology, and science. He was ordained in 1747 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he became pastor of the Charleston Baptist Church in 1750. For thirty years Hart dominated the Charleston Baptists, both in the pulpit and within the organization. He founded the first Baptist Association in the South, stressed the value of an educated clergy, and labored for interdenominational cooperation and unified church discipline. In 1769 Hart received an honorary M.A. at the first commencement of Rhode Island College (now Brown University). As revolutionary fervor...