This kind of official and unofficial persecution undoubtedly hindered Baptist growth in New England. But it also fired the zeal of committed Baptists, confirming that they should sacrifice everything for God’s truth. Out of the renewed persecution of the Great Awakening, the Separate Baptist movement became one of the primary seedbeds for American ideas about the separation of church and state. Baptists saw firsthand the dreadful effect of state persecution of dissenting religion. The Separate Baptists also fueled an unprecedented missionary campaign into the South, which prior to the Great
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