Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
States & Territories

Georgia

South

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Savannah's founding in 1733 included religious refugees from the start: John Wesley preached his earliest sermons there before returning to England to found Methodism, and Lutheran Salzburgers persecuted in Europe settled at Ebenezer the following year. Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. and his father both preached, became the spiritual center of the civil rights movement, and King is buried on the church grounds. The state remains heavily Southern Baptist outside its historically Black denominations, with camp meeting revivalism still practiced in rural counties.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Disestablished 1
The Church of England was established by colonial law in 1758; Georgia's Revolutionary era constitutions progressively dismantled the establishment, with the 1798 constitution explicitly barring the state from ever again establishing any religious denomination.
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Evangelical Protestant 2
Georgia: Evangelical Protestant is 33% of adults. Margin of error plus or minus 4.7 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/georgia/
Geography
Census Region
South 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
Named for King George II of Great Britain, who granted the colony's 1732 charter. 1
Learn More
John Wesley's Failed Georgia Ministry, and What Came After It

John Wesley arrived in Savannah in 1736 as the colony's Anglican parish priest, not yet the founder of anything called Methodism, and his eighteen months there are usually remembered as a failure rather than a beginning. He alienated much of his small congregation with a rigid, high church style of ministry, and his personal life became a public scandal when he refused communion to a woman named Sophia Hopkey he had unsuccessfully courted and who had since married another man, a decision that led to a court case against him and forced him to flee back to England in 1737 rather than face trial. It was only after that failure, at a meeting on Aldersgate Street in London in 1738, that Wesley experienced the conversion he later described as his heart being strangely warmed, the moment that actually launched the Methodist movement he is remembered for.

Georgia's religious founding held other threads that succeeded on their own terms even as Wesley's did not: Lutheran Salzburgers, refugees from persecution in Europe, settled Ebenezer the year after Savannah's 1733 founding, and two centuries later Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. and his father both preached, became the civil rights movement's spiritual center. The state remains heavily Evangelical Protestant today, thirty three percent of adults per Pew's 2023-24 study, in a religious landscape Wesley's own Georgia years never predicted.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Baptist, Denominations

This source names Baptist directly: "Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Europe, Continents

This source names Europe directly: "and Lutheran Salzburgers persecuted in Europe settled at Ebenezer the following year."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Georgia directly: "compound, Tama-Re, in Putnam County, Georgia."

This source names Georgia directly: "report on Geostat's final 2024 Georgia population and agricultural census results (fielded November 14 to December 31, 2024), stating that 3,223,206 people, 82.0 percent of the population..."

This source names Georgia directly: "and Linda Fuller near Americus, Georgia, growing out of the interracial Koinonia Farm community founded by Clarence Jordan."

Source Habitat for Humanity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "Koinonia Farm community near Americus, Georgia founded by Clarence Jordan."

Source Habitat for Humanity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "After the war he was active in Georgia Reconstruction politics, elected to the Georgia legislature in 1868 before being expelled along with other Black legislators by white colleagues who argued the..."

John Wesley, Figures

This source names John Wesley directly: "religious refugees from the start: John Wesley preached his earliest sermons there before returning to England to found Methodism, and Lutheran Salzburgers persecuted in Europe settled at Ebenezer..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Martin Luther, Figures

This source names Martin Luther directly: "Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Methodism directly: "before returning to England to found Methodism, and Lutheran Salzburgers persecuted in Europe settled at Ebenezer the following year."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Georgia directly: "population figures for the movement's Georgia period: about 100 followers relocated there with Dwight York in 1993, growing to about 400 people living at the Tama-Re compound by 2002."

Source Nuwaubian Nation (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "at Apostolic Tabernacle in Jonesboro, Georgia, holding a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK."

Source Talmadge L. French Biography (Omega Publishing)Omega Publishing staff

This source names Georgia directly: "the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia."

This source names Georgia directly: "French, stating he is pastor of Apostolic Tabernacle in Jonesboro, Georgia, holds degrees from Wheaton College and Wheaton College Graduate School and a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK..."

Source Talmadge L. French Biography (Omega Publishing)Omega Publishing staff

This source names Georgia directly: "the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America united to form the Presbyterian Church..."

This source names Georgia directly: "The paper moved from Alabama to Canon, Georgia in 1896, remaining there until 1991, and is still published today, quarterly, describing itself as "The Oldest Continuously Published Liberal Religious..."

Source The Universalist Herald (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "elected the Reverend Doctor Karen Georgia Thompson of the United Church of Christ as its president, the second woman to hold the office, and installed Philip Peacock of the Church of North India as..."

Source World Communion of Reformed ChurchesWikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "This Transparency International Georgia research post totals direct budget transfers from Georgia's Ministry of Finance to the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate since the 2002 Constitutional Agreement..."

This source names Georgia directly: "organizations across the UK, Canada, Georgia, India, the Netherlands, Pakistan and the United States, with objectives spanning poverty relief, education, sickness relief and the provision of burial..."

Source The World Zoroastrian Organisation Ltd: Charity Commission Filed Accounts, Year Ended 31 December 2024The World Zoroastrian Organisation Ltd (trustees' annual report and accounts, filed with the Charity Commission)

Principal Tradition Of

Evangelicalism, Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical Biography
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford UniversityView the Source
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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