CHURCH HISTORY II
LECTURE 37
BAPTISTS IN AMERICA II
1800-1900
Missionary Revival
The great revivals of the eighteenth century were followed by a great missionary zeal that propelled the gospel to
the ends of the earth. The first missionary sent out to foreign lands from America was Adoniram Judson (17881850). In late 1811, the Congregational churches with which he was affiliated formed
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. This was the first foreign
missions agency in the United States.
The first two missionaries under this board were Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice.
On the way to India, the young married couple studied the Bible and came to the
conviction that baptism is for believers only. When they arrived in Serampore, India,
they were baptized by William Ward, a co-worker with William Carey (first Missionary
from England). Four years later, Judson’s 67-year-old father resigned his pastorate in a
Congregational church and was baptized scripturally, together with his wife and
daughter (Adoniram’s sister), Abigail.
Luther Rice, who sailed on a different ship, came to the same conclusion independently
of the Judson’s. He returned to the States and traveled to Baptist churches to challenge
them for missions. In response, Baptist churches in America formed a missionary
society of their own. a. It was called the General Convention of the Baptist
Denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions. Judson died in 1850. At the time of his death, there were
63 Baptist churches in Burma with 7,000 baptized believers. This was largely because of the great response to the
gospel among the Karen tribe.
(David Cloud’s ebook: “A Baptist Perspective of the History of Churches” Baptist Churches in England in the 1600s”)
------------------------In the United States we have as data, contemporaneous with the first census in 1790, Asplund’s Register, which shows in
statistics, state by state, that there were in this country 564 Baptist preachers, 748 churches and 60,970 members. (B.H.
Carroll)
19th Century crises in Baptisdom:
Slavery Crisis:
In 1814, Baptists unified nationally under what became known informally as the Triennial Convention (because it met
every three years) based in Philadelphia. It allowed them to join their resources to support missions abroad. The Home
Mission Society, affiliated with the Triennial Convention, was established in 1832 to support missions in frontier
territories of the United States. By the mid-19th century, numerous social, cultural, economic, and political differences
existed among business owners of the North, farmers of the West, and planters of the South. The most divisive conflict
was primarily over the deep sectional issues of slavery and secondarily over missions.
Many Baptist preachers argued to preserve the rights of ministers to be slaveholders, a class which
included prominent Baptist Southerners and planters. The Triennial Convention and the Home
Mission Society reaffirmed their neutrality concerning slavery.
In 1844, Basil Manly, Sr., president of the University of Alabama, prominent preacher and a
planter who owned 40 slaves, drafted the "Alabama Resolutions" and presented them to the
Triennial Convention. These included the demand that slaveholders be eligible for denominational
offices to which the Southern associations contributed financially. Georgia Baptists decided to test
the claimed neutrality by recommending a slaveholder to the Home Mission Society as a
missionary. The Home Mission Society's board refused to appoint him, noting that missionaries
were not allowed to take servants with them (so clearly could not take slaves) and that they would
not make a decision that appeared to endorse slavery. Southern Baptists considered this an
infringement of their rights to determine their own candidates.
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The increasing tensions and discontent of Baptists from the South regarding national criticism of slavery and issues over
missions led to their withdrawal from the national Baptist organizations. They met at the First Baptist Church of Augusta
in May 1845. At this meeting, they formed a new convention, naming it the Southern Baptist Convention. They elected
William Bullein Johnson (1782–1862) as the new convention's first president. He had served as president of the Triennial
Convention in 1841.
In June 1995 at the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist
Convention, the SBC adopted a resolution officially
denouncing racism and expressing remorse over the role that
Southern Baptists have played in the acceptance of racism in
the past. This resolution clearly calls racism a "deplorable sin"
and apologizes to African Americans for "condoning and/or
perpetuating individual and systematic racism."
After the Civil War, blacks wanted to practice their form of
American Christianity away from racial discrimination and attempts by whites at control. In the late 1860s, they rapidly
set up several separate state Baptist conventions. In 1866, black Baptists of the South and West combined to form the
Consolidated American Baptist Convention. In 1895 they merged three national conventions to create the National
Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.. [Today] with 8 million members, it is the largest African-American religious
organization and is second in size to the Southern Baptist Convention.
(the above section all from Wikipedia)
The Baptists in the North were still part of the Triennial Convention until 1907 when they formed a new society: The
Northern Baptist Convention.
Landmark Crisis:
In 1811 Jesse Mercer, namesake of Mercer University, wrote a circular letter for the Georgia Baptist State Association
which defended the Baptist rejection of alien immersion on the basis of Baptist successionism. In it he equated the
rejection of alien immersion by the Baptist churches to a virgin
keeping herself chaste and spotless. The year Mercer wrote this
circular was the year James Madison Pendleton was born, nine years
before James Robinson Graves was born and two years before Amos
Cooper Dayton was born [(all famous Landmark Baptist leaders)].
William Heth Whitsitt, the third president of Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, presented the first
major academic challenge from within Baptist ranks to the theory of
church successionism. On the basis of primary source research in
England, Whitsitt conjectured that early English Baptists prior to
1641 had not baptized by immersion. John T. Christian, who also did
extensive research in the primary sources, published vigorous rebuttals to Whitsitt's conjectures. Through the efforts of
John T. Christian, T.T. Eaton and Benajah Harvey Carroll the Landmark party successfully ousted Whitsitt in 1899.
Southern Baptist Landmarkism sought to reset the ecclesiastical separation which
had characterized the old Baptist churches, in an era when inter-denominational
union meetings were the order of the day. James Robinson Graves was the primary
leader of this movement and one of the most influential Baptists of the 19th century.
While some Landmarkers eventually separated from the Southern Baptist
Convention, the movement's influence on the Convention continued well into the
20th century. Its influence continues to affect Convention policies. In 2005 the
Southern Baptist International Mission Board forbade its missionaries to receive
alien immersions for baptism.
In the early 1900’s, Landmarkism split out of the Southern Baptist Convention to
form to independent Associations: Baptist Missionary Association (BMA) and the
American Baptist Association (ABA).
(the above section all from Wikipedia)
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Mission’s Crisis:
Early in the 19th century, the rise of the modern missions movement, and the backlash against it, led to widespread and
bitter controversy among the American Baptists. During this era, the American Baptists were split between missionary
and anti-missionary. A substantial secession of Baptists went into the movement led by Alexander Campbell, to return to
a more fundamental church. (Wikipedia)
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Prominent Baptist groups in the 1800’s:
The Calvinistic ‘anti-Missionary’ Baptist groups are as follows: Regular Baptists, Particular Baptists, Strict Baptists,
Primitive Baptists, Hard-Shell Baptists, Old-School Baptists, and Two-Seed-In-The-Spirit Baptists.
The pro-Missionary Baptist groups were: Southern Baptists, Triennial Convention Baptists, Freewill Baptists, General
Baptists, Separate Baptists, and Six-Principle Baptists.
Freewill Baptists
[The Freewill Baptists had their first church organization in 1780, at New Durham, New Hampshire.] Free Will Baptist
Doctrine holds to the traditional Arminian position, based on the belief in a
General Atonement, that it is possible to commit apostasy, or willfully reject one's
faith. Faith is the condition for salvation, hence Free Will Baptists hold to
"conditional eternal security." An individual is "saved by faith and kept by faith."
(Wikipedia)
They also practice open communion, and some practice the ordinance of Foot
Washing. The fact that they were strongly in favor of the abolition of slavery
confined their following almost exclusively to the Northern States. (N.H. Pius,
DD)
Regular Baptists
By the close of the seventeenth century there were General Baptist churches and Particular Baptist churches scattered
throughout England. This was about the time that Baptists were making their way to the new world called America.
Regular Baptists in America
As both groups of Baptists arrived in America, their names gradually changed. After
settling into the colonies, General Baptists in the middle colonies were more commonly
called Free Baptists. Particular Baptists, in and around freer colonies such as Rhode Island,
came to be called Regular Baptists.
[Regular Baptists eventually took a very strict stance
on communion; that it was closed to non-members.]
This “closed” communion teaching gave these
churches a decided designation of “Strict Baptists.”
Their detractors began referring to these Strict
Baptists as Hard-shell or even Primitive Baptists.
President Abraham Lincoln’s parents, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, were members
of a Hard-shell Baptist church in Kentucky, which was part of the Licking-Locust
Association of Regular Baptists
In the early 19th century, the two dominant groups of Baptists in the United States (Regular Baptists & Separate
Baptists) effected a merger and dropped their party names in favor of the appellation United Baptists. [The Regular
Baptists were ‘anti-Missionary’ and the Separates were Arminian; an odd union indeed!]
(www.BaptistBulletin.org)
Primitive Baptists
Primitive Baptists are known as old school and anti-mission Baptists. The
principal difference between them and Regular Baptists is that they reject the
agencies of Sunday-schools and missionary, educational, and Bible societies.
They declare themselves as opposed to all of these "contrivances which seem to
make the salvation of men depend on human effort." (N.H. Pius, DD)
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Seventh Day Baptists.
In the United States their first church was founded in Newport, R. I., in
1671. Their distinctive doctrine is the observance of the Sabbath day, and
on that account, prior to 1818, were called Sabbatarian Baptists. The
Seventh Day Baptist General Conference was organized in 1801. (N.H.
Pius, DD)
Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Baptists
[Elder Daniel Parker (1781–1844) published his Views on the Two Seeds in
1826.] Parker taught that all persons are either of the "good seed" of God
or of the "bad seed" of Satan (the children of the good seed are roughly
equivalent to the "elect" of Calvinism, and those of the bad seed similar to the "non-elect"), and were predestined that
way from the beginning. Therefore mission activity was not only unbiblical, but as a practical matter useless, since the
"decision" was already made prior to birth. (Wikipedia)
Many of them reject a paid ministry and agree with Primitive Baptists in their attitude toward missionary, evangelistic
and educational agencies. (N.H. Pius, DD)
Six-Principle Baptists
The history of General Six-Principle Baptists in America begins in Rhode Island in 1652
when the historic Providence Baptist Church, which was once associated with Roger
Williams, split. The occasion was the development within the congregation of an
Arminian majority that held to the six principles of Hebrew 6:1-2 - repentance from dead
works, faith toward God, the doctrine of baptisms, the laying-on-of-hands, resurrection of
the dead, and eternal judgment. Of these, the laying-on-of-hands was the only one really
distinctive to this body, and that only because it was advocated as mandatory. This rite
was used at the baptism and reception of new members symbolizing the reception of the
gifts of the Holy Spirit. (N.H. Pius, DD)
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Baptist educational institutions in the U. S.
The most prominent educational institutions conducted by the white Baptists of the United States are here given with
location and date when founded: Brown University (the oldest Baptist
university in the United States), Providence, R. I., founded 1764;
Newton Theological Institute, Newton Center, Mass., founded 1826;
Colby University, Waterville, Me., founded 1820; Madison University,
now Colgate, Hamilton, N. Y., founded 1814; Rochester Theological
Seminary, Rochester, N. Y., founded 1850; Chicago University,
Chicago, Ill., founded 1890; Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Louisville, Ky., founded 1858; Richmond College, Richmond, Va.,
founded 1832; Vassar College (for young women) Poughkeepsie, N.
Y., founded 1861; Denison University, Granville, Ohio, founded 1832;
Baylor University, Waco, Texas, founded 1861. (N.H. Pius, DD)
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Noteworthy events in Baptisdom in the 1800’s
1802 - Organization of Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society, the first state convention to be organized in America.
"The object of this society shall be to furnish occasional preaching and to promote the knowledge of evangelic truth in
the new settlements within these United States; or farther if circumstances should render it proper."
1814 - Formation of the Triennial Convention (General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States for
Foreign Missions) in Philadelphia. Convened in order to pool resources for the support of Baptist foreign missionaries
Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson. A completely voluntary organization that exercised no control over matters of
theology. Its sole purpose was the financial support of foreign missions, and supporters of its work could be found in
local churches and associations throughout Southern and Northern states.
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1815 - Lott Carey was born a slave in Virginia. He became pastor of the 800-member African
Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., and in 1815 led in the formation of the Richmond African
Baptist Missionary Society. Carey is credited with being the first American missionary to
Africa (Sierre Leon, 1821).
1830 - Alexander Campbell drew many Baptist Churches into the
Disciples of Christ.
1831 - A Baptist pastor from Vermont named William Miller
calculated that Christ's second coming would occur this year. He
later revised the date to 1844. The Seventh Day Adventist church (Millerites) started from
these false predictions.
1833 - New Hampshire Confession written to combat the Arminianism of Free-will
Baptists.
1845 – Southern Baptist Convention formed out of southern split from the Triennial
Convention over the slavery issue.
1859 - Southern Baptist Theological Seminary opens in Greenville, SC. Among the first professors is John Albert
Broadus.
1860 - Approximately 12,000 Baptist Churches in America.
1872 - Benajah Harvey Carroll began his teaching of Theology and Bible at Baylor University.
He taught until 1905 when he started organizing the Baylor Theological Seminary.
1873 - Lottie Charlotte Moon is appointed missionary to China on July 7 by the Foreign Mission
Board, Southern Baptist Convention.
1895 - Several Baptist organizations combined to form the National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A.; this is the largest
black religious denomination in the United States.
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