More about North Carolina and the Scots

An interesting read about how Reformed Scots impacted North Carolina, America and beyond ... More about North Carolina and the Scots (Chatham Journal Weekly)

A sampling ...

Ironically, Scotland’s transformation began in 1559 when John Knox led a reformation that overthrew the established church and replaced it with a strict brand of Calvinism. Knox taught that the people must read the Bible and come to know God personally through their own thoughtful study and prayer. And they, not a distant king or church official, were to be responsible for the orderly governance of their churches.

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Because Knox believed that every person should come to know God personally through reading the Bible, the new church tried to teach every child in Scotland to read. Having been taught to read, many Scots began to read lots of books—and not just the Bible. Once this habit of reading independently took root, no one, not even John Knox and his successors, could control what they read, and what they learned, and what they thought.

Having been taught the responsibility to develop their own relationship with God, they developed a self-confident pride in their ability to solve every kind of problem and find ways to improve the world in which they lived.

By the end of the 1600’s, Scotland was the most literate nation on earth.

In the 1700’s, it became the center of philosophic and economic thinking, led by such familiar names as Adam Smith and David Hume, and a host of others. Its universities were the envy of every country in Europe.