\u201cIn the western section of the diocese,\u201d\u009d the Rev. John Stark Ravenscroft told North Carolina Episcopalians in 1825, \u201cthe prospect (of advancing the faith) is very discouraging, though not without hope.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
\u201cSpiritual destitution\u201d\u009d is how Bishop Levi Silliman Ives characterized our region\u2019s religious landscape 19 years later, though the physical landscape was \u201cbeautiful and striking, far beyond my powers of description.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians had made great spiritual progress in Western North Carolina as early as the 18th century. Samuel Edney, head of the Methodist church\u2019s Swannanoa circuit, established the first camp meeting west of the Blue Ridge in what is now Edneyvillle in the 1790s; in 1797, the Rev. George Newton turned Asheville\u2019s Union Hill Academy into a Presbyterian school named after him. The French Broad Baptist Church was organized in Henderson County in 1780, and regional churches formed the French Broad Baptist Association in 1807.<\/p>\n