They built the first seven churches in the area in the 1750s, all of them Presbyterian. There are now at least 700 churches in and around Charlotte. Young Life focuses on promoting Christianity among teens in the United States and in more than 50 other countries. Founded in 1941, the non-profit organization provides activities and support to middle school, high school and high school students located in rural and urban communities.
Young Life also operates one-week summer camp programs in about 20 locations in North America, as well as retreats that take place throughout the year. The group has grown over the years, going from being a single club in Texas to having some 600 international Young Life ministries spread around the world. The organization has about 3,000 employees and more than 27,000 volunteers. Does this group help people in need? Is the Pope Catholic? Catholic Charities USA, one of the largest non-profit groups in the country, is a network of some 175 Catholic charitable agencies across the country that work to end poverty, support families and strengthen communities.
It helps more than 7 million people each year by providing disaster assistance, emergency financial aid, food services, health clinics, housing services and mental health counseling. Catholic Charities spends about 90% of its revenues on program costs; most of its funding (60%) comes from the United States government. Although the group was officially founded in 1910, its roots go back to 1727, when French nuns founded an orphanage in New Orleans. Although Jewish congregations and places of worship are relatively recent in origin, Jewish citizens in Charlotte have been engaged in religious and charitable activities for a hundred years.
Charlotte's new Jewish congregation, Temple Beth El, was organized in 1942 and soon after built a synagogue on Providence Road. John Stark Ravenscroft, the first bishop of the diocese of North Carolina (1823-1830), was in Charlotte and preached in that community church building on the first Sunday of November 1824. A quarter of a century later, Methodists were numerous enough in North Carolina to form a Carolina circuit. Thomas Atkinson, third bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina (1853-188), on May 21, 1857 and the building was completed in 1858. Charlotte's first leader was John Morgan, a gentleman of such personal charm and sincerity that the new organization was soon firmly established and, ever since, has remained an aggressive and influential institution. This was, then, the beginning of one of the two churches that came together to form the First Methodist Church of Charlotte, the largest Methodist body in the city and the mother church of many of Mecklenburg's 48 Methodist congregations in 1960.
Levi Silliman Ives, the second bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina (1831-185), and at that time four people were confirmed. From then on, influenced by the Great Awakening (1775-177), the number of members of Methodist societies in North Carolina increased fourfold in two or three years. The St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church was established in Charlotte, first as a mission in 1834 and, later, to become a parish of the diocese in 1844. Robert Hall Morrison, pastor of the church and first president of Davidson College; and the Barium Springs orphanage, about forty miles from Charlotte, is the result of a small house established in Charlotte primarily by women from the First Presbyterian Church.
Members of the Myers Park Methodist Church worshiped in the Queens College chapel while waiting for them to occupy their own church in 1930. The first recorded service by a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Charlotte was held in a church built for the common worship of the community and unrelated to any denominational organization. Hutchison, in The first members of the Second Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina (195), the new church proved to be a worthy companion to its distinguished parent in promoting the cause of Presbyterianism in Charlotte and around the world. In 1860, these churches attempted to organize an Associate Reformed Church in Charlotte, but these efforts were interrupted by the War Between the States.
In 1923, after a gradual increase in Charlotte's population of Greek origin dating from around 1900, a Greek Orthodox community was organized, with the blessing of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America. .
