The following is taken from David Cloud’s ebook: “A ...



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 (1788-1850). 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”)

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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.

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)

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!]

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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)

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. 

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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