Saving Grace: Georgia's Historic Rural Churches (2018)

The book 'Historic Rural Churches of Georgia' is an award winning best seller. Aspects of Georgia's unique history can only be told through its extant rural churches. As the Georgia backcountry rapidly expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the churches erected on this newly parceled land became the center of community life. These early structures ranged from primitive outbuildings to those with more elaborate designs and were constructed with local, hand-hewn materials to serve the residents who lived nearby. From these rural communities sprang the villages, towns, counties, and cities that informed the way Georgia was organized and governed and that continue to influence the way we live today. Of the historic churches that have survived, many are now in various states of distress and neglect and require restoration to ensure that they will continue to stand. This book and television series is a project of the Historic Rural Churches of Georgia organization, whose mission is the preservation of historic rural churches across the state and the documentation of their history since their founding. If proper care is taken, these endangered and important landmarks can continue to represent the state's earliest examples of rural sacred architecture and the communities and traditions they housed. This television series, hosted by Jeffery Clarke, explores many of these wonderful old structures. Our final stop is in South Georgia where we sit down and chat with President Jimmy Carter about his life growing up in rural Plains, Georgia.