Chapter 6
PROGRESS AND SETBACKS
The second quarter of the nineteenth century proved to be as transformative as the first for Baptists but with mixed results. Baptists’ three “great societies” included the Triennial Convention (1814), the Baptist General Tract Society (1824), and the American Baptist Home Mission Society (1832). More than a dozen state conventions were formed between 1821 and 1850, including in upper northeast states such as Vermont and Maine (1824) and in the west in California during the year it was granted statehood (1850).
Educational opportunities increased greatly with the formation of regional institutions of higher learning, including the schools that came to be known as Union University (1823), Furman University (1826), Georgetown College (1829), Mercer University (1833), Wake Forest University (1834), Samford University (1841), and Baylor University (1845), to name just a few. Connectivity and communication increased through the rise of dozens of Baptist periodicals. By 1836, Baptists in Maine were reading Zion’s Advocate and The Eastern Baptist; J. H. Purkitt of Boston was editor of The Sabbath School Treasury; Richmond residents had access to The Religious Herald; New York Baptists laid claim to The Baptist Review and The Mother’s Journal; and stories of mission work throughout the country and the world circulated in The American Baptist and The Triennial Register.
In spite of their growth and attendant opportunities, Baptists experienced conflict over theological and practical matters. New confessions of faith demonstrated the need for Baptist subgroups to distinguish themselves from other Baptists. The rise of Primitive or “Old School” Baptists revealed division over the methodology of missions; the teaching of Alexander Campbell and William Miller led to the formation of new denominations; and the question of what to do about American slavery split Baptists into Northern and Southern conventions long before Fort Sumter was fired upon. But these divisions did not destroy the Baptist movement. Baptists continued to experience growth in North America and Great Britain, and the seeds of future growth were being planted throughout Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa.
A Baptist Historian Reflects on the Past Generation
When I look back I can hardly realize the changes which have taken place in our denomination, in my day, in the means of intelligence and benevolence. It seems almost incredible that a society which so lately was so slow to engage in any new enterprise, and was so jealous of any collegiate training for its ministers, should at this early period have so many colleges and kindred institutions spread over the land; that such a flood of periodicals of different kinds should so soon be added to the old magazine; that so much should have been done by this people in the home and foreign missions departments, in the Bible cause, in the publication of Baptist literature, in Sunday Schools and Bible classes, and in kindred labors of various kinds; and all since I first began to collect the scanty and scattered materials for their history.
Theological Identity
One key to understanding controversies among Baptists is realizing that institutional advancements nearly always involved theological changes. The phrase “methods may change but the message never does” is partially true, but it fails to recognize that methodology of any sort is based on a theological perspective. When David Benedict wrote Fifty Years Among the Baptists (1860), he candidly described how the rapid spread of the Baptist movement affected Baptist identity. One of the most notable changes related to the priesthood of all believers, the doctrine that every Christian is gifted by God and given a responsibility to serve others. Benedict noted that the rise of mission and benevolent institutions in Baptist life inadvertently promoted the notion that one could pass off his or her responsibility to serve by sending money to a society where those who were trained to do the work were expected, even employed, to do so. A similar phenomenon occurred with the advent of revival preachers. Though pastors once led their churches in seasons of revival, they were increasingly expected to call for revival preachers who specialized in spurring periods of excitement and growth.
Increased mobility affected ministerial longevity. Referring to them as “migratory shepherds,” Benedict commented on the tendency of Baptist ministers in the mid-nineteenth century to leave their churches after a few years of service in search of congregations more amenable to their preferences. Baptists living in larger cities rarely used the words “brother” and “sister” to refer to fellow church members as was once common practice, a sign to Benedict that a new emphasis on social standing reduced the importance of ecclesiological ties. Associational gatherings and convention meetings were affected by the growth of Baptists institutions. Benedict noted that ministers who once devoted their energy to spreading the gospel began taking their stand on methodological issues, such that “there were men always ready to introduce resolutions in favor of their anti-isms of various kinds.”
There was no “one size fits all” theological system for Baptists in the nineteenth century. Two confessions of faith, the New Hampshire Confession, published in 1833, and the Free Will Baptist Confession of 1834, illustrate this principle well. Prior to adopting these confessions, most Baptists in America relied on the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742), whose Calvinistic overtones were noted in chapter 2. Thus, it was not surprising that Baptists who embraced an Arminian perspective on predestination and perseverance chose to subscribe to a different statement of faith.
The Free Will Baptists, who traced their origin to Benjamin Randall in 1780, were so named because they believed the decision to receive or reject Christ as Savior rested ultimately with the individual and did not stem from God’s eternal decrees. Consequently, their confession of faith, “Treatise on the Faith and Practice of Free Will Baptists,” stated, “The power to believe is the gift of God, but believing is an act of the creature, which is required as a condition of pardon, and without which the sinner cannot obtain salvation.” The exercise of free will necessary for entrance into the faith also made it possible to exit from the faith. The confession stated that although “there are strong grounds to hope that the truly regenerate will persevere unto the end and be saved . . . their future obedience and final salvation are neither determined nor certain, since through infirmity and manifold temptations they are in danger of falling.”
The possibility of apostasy was never widely accepted in Baptist life, but Free Will Baptists often pushed the theological envelope. They practiced open communion, promoted women to leadership positions, and were among the first to protest slavery. Therefore, even those who were not in full agreement with the Calvinistic theology of the Philadelphia Confession could not necessarily find fellowship among the Free Will Baptists. An alternative route became available through the adoption of the New Hampshire Confession of 1833. Though published a year before the Free Will Confession, its contents contained a clear rejection of apostasy, noting “that such only are real believers as endure to the end.”
The New Hampshire Confession’s statement on election and its omission of sections on providence and the divine decrees allowed Calvinists and non-Calvinists alike to embrace the confession. Imputation of Adam’s guilt to his posterity was not mentioned, with the confession noting instead that humans choose to sin in accordance with Adam and Eve’s rebellion. The confession defined election as “the eternal purpose of God, according to which he graciously regenerates, sanctifies and saves sinners,” worded in such a way that a non-Calvinist could agree. Although the confession noted that election is “perfectly consistent with the free agency of man,” it intentionally avoided the words “free will” since many Baptists did not subscribe to human freedom in the same sense as Free Will Baptists. More notably the confession stipulated, “The blessings of salvation are made free to all by the gospel,” and said nothing about limited atonement, a doctrine that was conspicuously present in the Philadelphia Confession.
These changes were not denials of Calvinism but modifications that muted points of Calvinistic theology in an attempt to express the beliefs of an ever-broadening Baptist constituency. The New Hampshire Confession was partly a reaction to Free Will teaching and partly an update of Baptist beliefs. When delegates of the New Hampshire Baptist Convention appointed a committee to draw up a confession, their stated desire was to produce a work “as may be thought agreeable and consistent with the views of all churches in this state.” Even though the New Hampshire Confession became the most popular confession of faith among Baptists in the nineteenth century, it could not possibly capture the views of all Baptist churches in that or any other state. Diversity was already integral to the Baptist movement and divisions stemming from that diversity occurred to an extent previously unimagined.
Antimission Controversies
One major Baptist controversy during the nineteenth century began with the appearance of the antimission movement. When Baptists debated the structure of the Triennial Convention, theirs was a debate of how, not whether, to conduct missions. The convention’s framers did not anticipate that a sizable portion of Baptists would soon challenge the idea of missions regardless of the funding structure adopted. Opposition to missions became so prominent that thirty years after the formation of the Triennial Convention, 1,600 churches in America belonged to antimission movements, identifying themselves either as Primitive Baptists or as Old School Baptists. Their detractors called them Hardshell Baptists or Anti-Effort Baptists, but regardless of the designation, their numbers illustrate that they were successful in converting others to their point of view. Baptists in England experienced similar divisions with the rise of Strict Baptists, who rejected the duty faith teaching of Andrew Fuller and consequently dismissed the Baptist Union’s attempt to unite English Baptists for missions. Canadian Baptists also experienced this division, albeit on a smaller scale, with the rise of the Covenanted Baptist Church in 1820.
The movement was largely reactionary as leaders argued against the new methods of mission promoters, particularly the steady stream of requests to help fund missionaries. Baptists had not employed traveling agents prior to their interest in organized missions, and a systematic form of giving through local churches would not be in place until the early twentieth century. When Baptists began sending agents to frontier churches to solicit financial support, opposition mounted from preachers who had built their own churches without financial backing and preached the gospel free of charge.
John Taylor attacked the missionary enterprise by questioning the motives and methods of fundraisers. The disdain he felt for two Congregationalist agents who suggested that he could improve his own financial situation by promoting missions contributed to Taylor’s dislike of the lead fundraiser in Baptist life, Luther Rice. Taylor was convinced Rice was in the ministry for money, and Taylor never lacked a current illustration to make his point. In his 1819 treatise Thoughts on Missions, Taylor compared Rice’s pleas for money to those of Johann Tetzel, the prominent seller of indulgences on the eve of the Reformation. Like Tetzel’s nemesis Martin Luther, Taylor was determined to drive the “Judas-like money grabber” out of Baptist life.
Taylor’s references to Rice as the “New England Rat” and “Yankee” reveal an additional impetus of his disdain, namely sectional prejudice. Taylor struck a chord in Kentucky and tapped into the concerns of Baptists in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains who feared that mission societies were “aristocracies” bent on violating the independent nature of Baptist churches. Although leaders of the mission societies stressed the inviolable nature of local church autonomy, their organizational structure included presidents, board members, and conventions, which made decisions outside the authority of any single congregation. Primitive and Old School Baptist views were strongest where localism was dominant.
Antimission Baptists also believed the theological underpinnings of the mission movement were suspect. Missionary Baptists embraced Fuller’s evangelical Calvinism, whereas Primitive Baptists reverted to hyper-Calvinism. In general, both groups held that God elected people to salvation apart from any consideration of good works or foreseen faith, but they were divided on whether, and to what degree, God employed the work of missionary organizations to accomplish his plan of salvation.
Among the most extreme antimission Baptists was Daniel Parker, whose views on predestination bore no resemblance to historic Calvinism yet mobilized antimission Baptists against the efforts of mission-friendly Baptists. In his 1826 work Views on the Two Seeds, Parker cited Genesis 3:15 as the text that explained why some people come to faith and others do not, noting that God placed enmity between the offspring of the serpent and the woman. Cain and Abel were prime illustrations that people were born with either the serpent’s seed or the seed of Christ, each having their destinies more or less genetically determined. Ishmael and Isaac, along with Esau and Jacob, served as further confirmation of the continuing line of “tares and wheat.” Parker’s unique doctrine came to be known as Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarianism, the implications of which diminished evangelism and encouraged isolationism. With virtually no hope of converting the nonelect, adherents of the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit theory directed their energies toward exposing the beliefs of Catholics and Protestant non-Baptists as false gospels and their gatherings as false churches. Despite their aberrant theology, Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists established churches throughout Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas by 1850, though never more than 500 congregations.
The Two Seeds
Fifty or sixty years ago, was there any application made to the Baptists, by any of these daughters of the old mother Rome, for communion? I think not. At that time the Baptists were looked down at with contempt, while the foot of persecution was on their neck. Was not the enmity of the serpent’s seed plainly seen and felt then? But since liberty of conscience has been protected by our civil law, truth has had full liberty to defend her cause, Satan and his kingdom has begun to tremble. His last stratagem is to deceive, by appearing as an angel of light, and his ministers as ministers of righteousness, and by his cunning art in coming as nigh the truth as his nature can admit, have drawn off a number of the precious children of God, both preachers and laity, who have taken up their abode in the synagogue of Satan, while others stand amazed in wonder at the enmity and war between the two seeds.
Though leading figures of the missionary movement claimed to be Calvinists, leaders of the antimission movement questioned whether they genuinely believed in God’s sovereignty since they promoted “means,” or methods, designed to bring sinners into the family of God. Primitive Baptists railed against Sunday schools, evangelistic tracts, mission agencies, revival gatherings, and ministerial education. Missionary Baptists stopped short of claiming that God needed their organized efforts to bring the elect to faith, but their constant pleas for financial support and ongoing plans for outreach convinced antimission Baptists that their Calvinistic doctrines and innovative methods were hopelessly at odds with their own.
Associations split apart and then reorganized on antimission platforms, beginning in 1828 with the Canoochee Association in Georgia and extending to the Apple Creek Association of Illinois in 1830. In 1832, Maryland Old School Baptists issued a statement outlining their differences with mission-friendly Baptists. Known as the “Black Rock Address,” the document opened with a statement declaring “a new era in the history of the Baptists” when believers like themselves were faulted for “refusing to go beyond the word of God.” They then listed examples of mission-friendly Baptists adopting methods not found in the Bible and asked which of the two, antimission or mission-friendly Baptists, had departed from the old ways.
Excerpt from the Black Rock Address (1832)
There is, brethren, one radical difference between us and those who advocate these various institutions which we have noticed to which we wish to call your attention. It is this: they declare the gospel to be a system of means; these means it appears they believe to be of human contrivance; and they act accordingly. But we believe the gospel dispensation to embrace a system of faith and obedience, and we would act according to our belief. We believe, for instance, that the seasons of declension, of darkness, of persecutions, &c., to which the church of Christ is at times subject, are designed by the wise Disposer of all events; not for calling forth the inventive geniuses of men to remove the difficulties, but for trying the faith of God’s people in his wisdom, power and faithfulness to sustain his church. On him, therefore, would we repose our trust, and wait his hour of deliverance, rather than rely upon an arm of flesh.
The Black Rock Address cited tract societies as an example of mission advocates championing their methods solely because they reached people who were otherwise unlikely to read the entire Bible. From the antimission perspective, tract societies wrongly abbreviated the Bible to the essential message of salvation, thus encouraging people to find eternal life without stumbling over lengthy books like Leviticus or obscure books like Obadiah. Sunday schools also came under scrutiny. Even though Missionary Baptists claimed thousands of conversions through an additional study session outside the time of congregational worship, Old School Baptists said Sunday schools did little more than teach Bible facts to people who were not truly converted, thus making them hypocrites. Bible societies were criticized for continually appealing for funds to support their efforts rather than using publishing companies already in existence and saving money. Once again, the charge of greed was levied.
Regarding missions, the Black Rock Address attempted to clear up misrepresentations of antimission Baptists. They were not, as some had charged, unaware of the Great Commission text in Matthew 28:18–20, nor were they under the impression that the charge applied only to the apostles in the first century. They affirmed the need for financial support of missions, provided the principles of doing so were not “a subversion of the order marked out in the New Testament.” This reference to order represents a key idea in the antimission argument, namely that the Bible not only contained a command to spread the gospel but also provided the methodology as well. The central complaint against mission societies was that they were not churches and as such were formed under different rules of membership and guided by different principles. The fact that a person could join a mission society by paying an annual fee practically invited unregenerate persons to participate and perhaps even lead. Missions, from an antimission perspective, should be conducted solely through the local church in order to safeguard the gospel message.
The final two areas of concern were ministerial education and protracted meetings. The rapid formation of Baptist colleges demonstrated an eagerness on the part of Baptist ministers to acquire intellectual capacity for preaching well, but it also reflected a desire for social respectability. Primitive and Old School Baptists mocked the efforts of those living in cosmopolitan areas to fit in with the upper class. Moreover, they charged that Missionary Baptists wrongly equated matters of revelation with human sciences—one could not learn the ministry in the same way one could learn mathematics. The call to ministry was, from their vantage point, a command to begin preaching rather than a hiatus to prepare polished sermons. Protracted meetings, or scheduled times for evangelistic services in hope of bringing a revival, were criticized for presuming that the Holy Spirit was obliged to move in the hearts of people simply because a church decided to meet for evangelistic purposes. The lack of doctrinal preaching and the employment of altar calls at the end of sermons suggested that Missionary Baptists relied too heavily on human instrumentality to elicit professions of faith.
The Black Rock Address helped draw a line of demarcation between Missionary and antimissionary Baptists. This division was solidified through publication of Primitive Baptist periodicals like Gilbert Beebe’s Signs of the Times, which waged war with “Arminianism the mother and her whole brood of institutions,” and Joshua Lawrence’s The Primitive Baptist, which called antimission Baptists to “come ye out from among them” and be separate. A handful of Primitive Baptist associations declared that baptisms performed by missionary-friendly churches were invalid. The divisions were so deep that attempts at reconciliation consistently failed to change minds on either side.
Each group determined its own standards of success. Missionary Baptists cited their ever-growing number of converts, missionaries, and institutions as evidence of God’s favor. Old School Baptists peaked in membership by midcentury and then declined as Americans embraced progress over primitivism. Still, antimission Baptists claimed to be God’s faithful remnant, citing numerous biblical texts that portrayed the people of God as the minority in a world where false religion abounded.
Campbellites and Millerites
The division between Primitive and Missionary Baptists was an internecine affair in Baptist life, in which two groups advanced rival claims to be the legitimate heirs to the Baptist story. Other Baptist battles spawned new movements rather than divisions within the Baptist family. The formation of the Disciples of Christ and the Seventh-day Adventists are examples of two groups rejecting their denominational heritage in search of a better version of the New Testament church.
Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ, was born in Ireland and raised as a Presbyterian, but he left his country and denomination when he immigrated to America in 1809. His father, Thomas, likewise withdrew from the Presbyterians, and together they founded the Brush Run Church in western Pennsylvania. Rereading the Bible apart from denominational ties, they concluded that believer’s baptism by immersion was the biblical model for disciples and in 1815, as a symbol of unity, began to cooperate with the Redstone Baptist Association.
Differences between Alexander Campbell and the Baptists
Your opinions on some other points are, I think, dangerous, unless you are misunderstood, such as casting off the Old Testament, exploding experimental religion for its common acceptation, denying the existence of gifts in the present day commonly believed to exist among all spiritual Christians, such as preaching & etc. Some of your opinions, though true, are pushed to extremes, such as those upon the use of creeds, confessions, & etc. Your views of ministerial support, directed against abuses on that head, would be useful, but leveled against all support to ministers (unless by way of alms) is so palpably contrary to scripture and common sense, that I persuade myself that there must be some misunderstanding. In short your views are generally so contrary to those of the Baptists in general, that if a party was to go fully into the practice of your principles I should say a new sect had sprung up, radically different from the Baptists, as they now are.
Campbell’s conversion to Baptist views was something of a mixed blessing for Baptists. On one hand, he proved himself one of their most capable debaters against Catholics, Presbyterians, and Methodists. Yet the same tenacity that helped him succeed in debates contributed to his leaving the Baptists seventeen years later on a quest for a more biblical form of Christianity that relied less heavily on confessions of faith. Like Taylor and Parker, Alexander Campbell opposed mission societies on the basis that they were unscriptural innovations. Unlike Taylor and Parker, however, Campbell rejected Calvinistic theology because he believed it represented a move beyond the Bible’s simple message to creedal positions that divided rather than united Christians.
Campbell’s rejection of creedal Christianity was part of a larger Restorationist movement already set in motion by Barton Stone. Restorationists were convinced denominational divisions could be overcome by a common sense reading of the New Testament, one that was not influenced by doctrinal positions passed on from denominational founders. For Campbell, this interpretive approach led to the rejection of doctrines like limited atonement and practices like calling ministers “Reverend.” Put simply, whatever could not be deduced from a simple reading of the Bible should not be embraced by followers of Christ. When Campbell’s Brush Run Church joined the Redstone Baptist Association, they did not affirm the association’s confession of faith; and when he left the Baptist movement, he shed the denominational name altogether.
Campbell’s departure cost Baptists thousands of church members in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Tennessee as many resonated with his desire for a clearer, less convoluted, Christian faith. He also acquired thousands of followers through the publication of his two periodicals, The Christian Baptist (1823–30) and The Millennial Harbinger (1830–66). However, his attempt at biblical simplicity did not result in denominational unity, as Campbell replaced traditional Baptist beliefs with a competing theological system of his own. He equated bare mental assent with genuine faith; he taught that salvation was incomplete without believer’s baptism, thus giving the strong impression that being immersed in water made the work of Christ effectual; and he dismissed the Old Testament as having no practical value in the Christian life. In 1832 his movement merged with Barton Stone’s Christian Church, and their followers became known as the Disciples of Christ. This new denomination experienced remarkable growth, becoming the largest indigenous American religious body in the nineteenth century. Baptists distanced themselves from Campbell and his teaching. However, his “no creed but the Bible” mantra entered the vocabulary of many Baptists, which raised significant challenges to Baptist confessions for years to come.
The year following the formation of the Disciples of Christ, William Miller was licensed to preach by a Baptist church in Low Hampton, New York. Miller was a self-educated farmer who, as Mark Noll rightly notes, “exemplified extraordinary religious creativity in the boisterous climate of the early United States.” Unlike Campbell, who advocated a simple reading of Scripture, Miller focused on minute details of prophetic literature in an attempt to discover the timing of Christ’s return. During the 1820s and 1830s, evangelicals were shifting in their understanding of the millennial reign of Christ, with many coming to believe that he would return to earth first and then begin his thousand-year reign. Many evangelicals from earlier generations believed the millennium would occur as the church succeeded in its mission with Christ returning afterward. Miller advocated the premillennial view and, after being licensed as a Baptist preacher, announced that he knew the year in which Christ would return—1843—basing his prediction on the book of Daniel. He interpreted “days” in Daniel’s prophetic passages as “years” and used the Jewish calendar to mark Christ’s second advent at precisely 2,300 years from Artaxerxes’s decree to rebuild Jerusalem. Audiences were intrigued by his precision, and his message received widespread attention through Joshua Himes’s paper, The Midnight Cry. Thousands became convinced of Miller’s prediction when a financial panic struck the nation in 1837, bringing about a major recession. People on the edge of economic catastrophe believed it to be a warning that the end was near.
Of course, the date passed without Christ’s second advent, leading Miller to recalculate the date to October 22, 1844. When his second prediction proved false, many “Millerites” left organized religion altogether. Baptists, already wary of his interpretive daring, disassociated themselves from him and his followers in 1845. However, the movement gained new momentum under the leadership of Ellen White, who fostered Adventist hope further by focusing on Sabbath observance and dietary reforms as a means of hastening Christ’s return. White’s movement came to be known as Seventh-day Adventists.
Northern and Southern Baptists
The formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1845 foreshadowed the differences between the North and South sixteen years before the American Civil War began. The morality of slavery was the central issue that led to the formation of the SBC, although Southern Baptists at the time emphasized missions as the main factor precipitating their decision to form an alternate body to the Triennial Convention. Indeed, their constitution did not mention slavery, highlighting instead the singular task of “directing the energies of the whole denomination in one sacred effort, for the propagation of the Gospel.” Despite attempts at contextualization, Leon McBeth correctly referred to the central role of slavery in the SBC’s founding as a “blunt historical fact.”
British Baptists Oppose Slavery
Dear Brethren:
We, the members of the Board of Baptist Ministers in and near London, desire affectionately and with much earnestness, to commend ourselves to your candid and Christian attention. . . . We understand that the number of slaves in the United States is considerably above two million, while the system under which they are held is said to be characterized by some features peculiarly revolting and oppressive. But it is not our purpose to enter into details; we wish rather to fix your attention on the system as a whole—its unchristian character, its degrading tendency, the misery it generates, the injustice, the cruelty and wretchedness it involves. Is it not an awful breach of the Divine law, a manifest infraction of that social compact which is always and everywhere binding? And if it be so, are you not, as Christians, and especially as Christian ministers, bound to protest against it, and to seek, by all legitimate means, its speedy and entire destruction? You have a high and holy part, dear brethren, to act; and future generations will bless your name, and the God whom you serve will approve your conduct, if you are prompt and diligent in its performance.
As mentioned in chapter 2, Baptists in the American South accepted slavery as a way of life and largely dealt with issues related to master-slave relations on a case-by-case basis. In this instance, however, an entire denomination was created in defense of the “peculiar institution.” Students of Baptist history do well to ask why this sinful perspective made sense to Southern Baptists two centuries ago. What was it about the world they lived in, the values they inherited, and the Bible they read that gave them the impression that the Christian faith was compatible with American slavery?
To enter that world it should be noted that neither Baptists nor Christians were the first or the only religious groups to embrace slavery. It had been practiced in the ancient world before its arrival in the New World, was enforced by Romans as well as Muslims, and included multiple ethnicities before Africans were singled out in discriminatory fashion. Moreover, the abolition of the slave trade was of particular concern to Christians even when it pitted them against members of their own faith. From the Middle Ages, when popes issued decrees against the practice of slavery, to the late modern period, when Parliament outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, opposition to slavery was frequent and firm. The defense of slavery largely came from those with vested economic interests, which naturally included residents of the American South, dependent as they were at the turn of the nineteenth century upon an agrarian economy. Northerners who protested slavery were on the right side of history, but on the whole they did not promote abolition until it was in their economic interest to do so.
In addition to citing the long history of slavery and the economic advantage it afforded, Baptists in the South regarded it as legitimate because they read about it in the Bible. Both the Old and New Testaments provided instructions regarding the treatment of slaves, and neither Testament contained a single verse that directly prohibited slavery. Passages such as Exodus 20:17 and Leviticus 25:44–46 could not easily be dismissed as belonging to the Jews only since these references were echoed in Paul’s instruction to the churches in Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22. Richard Furman, in his 1822 address to the South Carolina legislature, spoke for many Baptists in the South in this regard: “Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives in the cause of their God, would have tolerated it for a moment in the Christian church.”
Along with this primary argument that Scripture regulated slavery without ever prohibiting it, Southerners offered other biblical arguments that were weaker exegetically. Borrowing from rabbinical and early church interpretations, some Baptists who favored slavery argued that it originated relatively early in world history, claiming that Noah’s curse on Canaan and his descendants (Gen 9:25) foretold the subjugation of the African people. Many even believed the mark of Cain (Gen 4:15) referred to his skin pigmentation, illustrating that people of color were socially inferior by divine design. Neither of these arguments can be defended with any seriousness today, but they were painfully effective at the time in justifying an inherited social order.
Baptist Protectors and Defenders
After the Civil War a commonsense reading of slavery passages prevailed. Baptists and other Christians recognized the difference between the existence of slavery in biblical times and the extermination of slavery in their own time. Put simply, God had indeed provided regulations for a practice he was actually against. Prior to the Civil War, however, Southerners who read the Bible to their advantage demanded chapter and verse prohibition of slavery. Hence, if abolitionists were going to convince slave-owning Baptists of the error of their ways, they needed direct scriptural support for their position. This was no simple task as abolitionists’ key biblical texts either related only tangentially to slavery or did not produce the desired result. Jesus’ admonition to treat others as one would wish to be treated (Matt 7:12) could be applied in any number of ways apart from a slave owner reconsidering how he might feel if the tables were turned. Moreover, Jesus’ announcement that he had come to set the captives free (Luke 4:18) evidently had a spiritual fulfillment since Roman slavery continued well into the fourth century. The apostle Paul suggested that Philemon give Onesimus his freedom (Phlm 12–16) but did not require him to do so, and he elsewhere asserted that slaves should learn to lean on Christ rather than long for their freedom (1 Cor 7:20–22).
Those who pressed the case primarily using reason rather than biblical revelation risked being identified with Quakers, Episcopalians, and Unitarians, who agreed that slavery was inhumane but had abandoned orthodox doctrine in other areas. Guilt by association carried significant weight and made Baptists hesitant to side with theologically aberrant groups. Moreover, slave revolts led by Denmark Vessey in South Carolina and Nat Turner in Virginia, occurring in 1822 and 1831 respectively, further galvanized Southerners against a completely free society.
The lack of biblical commands to end slavery and the fears roused by slave revolts did not diminish the rhetoric or the spirit of antislavery activists. David Barrow, a Free Will Baptist in Kentucky, formed an association of churches committed to abolition. He argued against slavery from multiple angles as suggested by the title of his treatise, Involuntary, Unmerited, Perpetual, Absolute, Hereditary Slavery Examined on the Principles of Nature, Reason, Justice, Policy and Scripture. In 1840, Baptists in New York formed the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention, and their colleagues in Boston formed the American Baptist Free Mission Society. Additional support for abolition (or agitation, from a Southern perspective) came from Baptists across the Atlantic who helped eliminate slavery from the British West Indies in 1833 and called on their American counterparts to do the same in their country. Members of the Baptist Union wrote a letter to the leaders of the Triennial Convention, urging them to stop slavery. British Baptists Francis Cox and James Hoby crossed the Atlantic in 1834 to make personal efforts at persuasion, but to no avail. In response to such efforts, Southern Baptists recalled that northern and British Baptists had once participated in the very institution they now sought to demolish.
Richard Furman’s Treatise on Slavery (1822) was a revealing Baptist work. Believing as he did that Scripture permitted slavery, Furman made additional arguments concerning the well-being of blacks. He noted that slaves in America experienced a higher standard of living than they likely would have in their native homelands. Their lives were by no means easy, but their life expectancy increased significantly with their placement in a more civilized country. They were also under masters with legal obligation to provide for their needs whether young or old, healthy or sick. Additionally, Furman argued that the impact of Christianity on slaves surpassed both their physical status and their temporal state. Unlike some Southerners, he believed blacks were on equal ground with whites in terms of having an eternal soul and facing a day of judgment whereupon they would give an account of their lives: “Their religious interests claim a regard from their masters of the most serious nature, and it is indispensable. Nor can the community at large, in a right estimate of their duty and happiness, be indifferent on this subject.” Masters therefore had a dual obligation to care for the body and soul of their slaves. Still, Furman wrote as a man tied to his time. He envisioned a day when blacks might enjoy the full liberties of free people, yet he could not envision a time in which slavery as an institution, regardless of ethnicity, would not exist.
Although one can rightly take issue with Furman’s arguments, the spread of Christianity among slaves was remarkable. The gospel message of the First Great Awakening brought a type of freedom to slaves that political arguments of the Revolutionary War did not: equal standing with others before God and semiequal footing with whites in the church. Slaves were invited to believe in Jesus, but they were directed to sit in the balcony of the church in order to respect societal segregation. Prior to the 1830s, when slavery became more of a political issue, Baptists licensed black ministers to preach, some of whom spoke to white congregations. Biracial worship was not the only way enslaved Christians found a modicum of freedom. Slaves often participated in church discipline, and they found that the practice of removing sinful persons from church membership added a layer of protection against unbearable, violent masters.
The debate over slavery was placed in the public eye when Richard Fuller (not to be confused with Richard Furman) and Francis Wayland debated the institution’s merits in a series of letters published in 1844 and 1845 for the Christian Reflector, a Boston-based Baptist newspaper. Those letters and an additional letter by Wayland were later bound as a single volume entitled Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (1845). Their correspondence reveals how each struggled to address a problem they had inherited from history. Both were educated men, Fuller having studied at Harvard and Wayland serving as president of Brown University; both were deeply invested in missions through their work in the Triennial Convention. However, Fuller was convinced slavery was a biblically sanctioned institution whereas Wayland considered it a moral evil. Their letters stood out to readers as a courteous disagreement that generated more light than heat. On a personal level, they agreed to disagree and demonstrated how to discuss the issue without demonizing one’s opponent. Fuller later carried this balancing act to his pastorate in Baltimore where he guided his congregation through the Civil War, even as sons of members fought for both the Confederate and Union armies. Wayland’s attitude was such that he attracted Southern ministers to attend Brown University.
Francis Wayland and Richard Fuller Debate Slavery
It is needless to assure you that I have read your letters in reply to mine on Domestic Slavery, with profound attention and unfeigned admiration. To the acuteness of one profession and the learning of another, in both of which you have attained the highest distinction, you have here added a fervor of eloquence and a richness of illustration peculiarly your own. Never before, I presume, has the defense of slavery on Christian principles been so ably conducted. Never before, I think, has anything been written so admirably calculated to make a favorable impression on those who hold the opposite opinions. . . . The warm spirit of philanthropy which pervades every part of your argument must melt away every prejudice by which it could be resisted. . . . While, however, I say this, and I say it from my heart, I do not perceive that you have overthrown a single position which I have attempted to establish.
Formation of the Southern Baptist Convention
Baptists were not the only religious group struggling with the slavery question. New School Presbyterians separated over slavery in 1837, and the Methodists split in 1844. The breaking point for Baptists in the Southern states came through correspondence with the Triennial Convention and the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS). Both organizations attempted to avoid the slavery question by claiming neutrality in the matter, but their efforts to do so did not last long. During the early 1840s, home and foreign mission advocates discussed rising concerns about slavery, but neither the Triennial Convention nor the ABHMS spoke for or against it. Since the Triennial Convention and ABHMS were formed before slavery became a political issue, their constitutions did not address it. But history caught up to them, and Baptists in Georgia and Alabama forced them to take a side in the debate.
In 1844, Georgia Baptists nominated a slave owner for appointment as a home missionary through the ABHMS. Apart from the slavery question, James Reeve, their nominee, was qualified to serve and came with the financial backing of Georgia Baptists to secure his appointment. The fact that he owned slaves and intended to continue doing so if appointed made him a test case of sorts. The strategy of Georgia Baptists was simple enough: if the ABHMS refused to appoint Reeve, then the society’s claim of being neutral on slavery would be exposed as false. If the ABHMS did appoint Reeve as a missionary, abolitionists would conclude that the society was no longer neutral but rather in favor of slavery.
Georgia Baptists had seemingly forced the ABHMS to take a position on slavery, but the board deftly responded by refusing to receive the application. In other words, they neither appointed nor rejected him. However, they replied to Georgia Baptists, citing them—though not formally accusing them—of starting a controversy on a matter that had already been decided as a nonissue. Nevertheless, the board members of the ABHMS were narrowly divided, voting seven to five against taking action on Reeve’s application. For their part, Georgia Baptists were convinced that the failure to appoint Reeve revealed there was little future for slave owners in the ABHMS.
Alabama Baptists employed a similar strategy with the Triennial Convention, but instead of nominating a slave owner for appointment to foreign missions, they sent a letter demanding the board members of the Triennial Convention directly address the matter. As a state convention, Baptists in Alabama claimed their right to participate in decisions regarding missionary appointments. Neutrality was not an option, they said, since slaveholders were legitimate participants in the convention. As a practical matter, they determined to withhold funds from the Triennial Convention until the board produced a satisfactory statement on slavery.
The response by board members was both tailored and terse. The members stated that since the founding of the Triennial Convention neither slave owners nor those who did not own slaves had received any special privileges. Moreover, to their knowledge, no slave owner had ever applied to become a missionary. In essence, then, the question put forth by Alabama Baptists was merely hypothetical, and the board took offense at being placed in the position to answer for the entire Triennial Convention. But rather than allow the question to remain unanswered, as the ABHMS had done, the board determined to be as forthright as possible: “If, however, any one should offer himself as a missionary, having slaves, and should insist on retaining them as his property, we could not appoint them. One thing is certain, we can never be a party to any arrangement which would imply approbation of slavery.” The board had thus deemed slavery in America immoral.
Despite moderating attempts to placate Baptists in the South, a new missionary organization open to slave owners was formed on May 8, 1845, in Augusta, Georgia. A total of 293 delegates assembled, 273 of whom were from Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. The number of churches and church members represented was substantial. At its inception, the Southern Baptist Convention, as the organization was to be called, had 4,126 cooperating churches with 351,951 members. The choice of William Bullein Johnson as the first president of the SBC was something of a symbolic victory for the South, given the fact that he was president of the Triennial Convention from 1841 to 1844. He had stepped down a year earlier and was replaced, not coincidentally, by Francis Wayland. Johnson’s experience in drafting constitutions for the Triennial Convention and the state convention of South Carolina had prepared him for the moment when, a week prior to the Augusta meeting, he pulled from his pocket a proposed constitution for the SBC. The document revealed Johnson’s preference for a convention plan, which combined foreign and home missions, as well as “other important objects connected with the Redeemer’s kingdom.” The SBC would therefore differ from the Triennial Convention not only in its acceptance of slavery but also in its method of funding ministries. Fears that a North-South split would hinder mission work among Baptists were ultimately unrealized, as the SBC became the largest Baptist denomination in America during the century that followed.
Numerical results notwithstanding, the acceptance of American slavery as a scripturally ordained institution periodically led Southern Baptists to distance themselves from their history. In his “Address to the Public,” Johnson framed the division between Northern and Southern Baptists as being strictly related to missions. They did not differ on matters of faith, he noted, nor did they consider one another unchristian. He noted they had worked together for many years until the board of the Triennial Convention changed the rules of participation in the middle of the game, thus prohibiting slave-owning Baptists from becoming missionaries. Slavery, according to Johnson, was not the fundamental issue. Rather, Southerners had been “forbidden” from “speaking unto the Gentiles.” The formation of a new mission organization was necessary in order for slavery advocates to obey the Great Commission.
The Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement both passed before Southern Baptists formally attempted to put their past behind them. Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1995, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a “Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention.” The resolution stated that Eve was the “mother of all living,” contradicting the idea that God favored one ethnic group over another. It also admitted that the founding of the SBC stemmed in part from racial prejudice against blacks, a sin Southern Baptists declared “profoundly distorts our understanding of Christian morality.”
For Further Study
Benedict, David. Fifty Years Among the Baptists. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1860.
Briggs, John H. Y. The English Baptists of the 19th Century, chapter 3. London: The Baptist Historical Society, 1994.
Chute, Anthony. A Piety Above the Common Standard: Jesse Mercer and the Defense of Evangelistic Calvinism. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004.
Crowley, John G. Primitive Baptists of the Wiregrass South: 1815 to the Present. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1988.
Gardner, Robert G. A Decade of Debate and Division: Georgia Baptists and the Formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995.
Mathis, James R. The Making of the Primitive Baptists: A Cultural and Intellectual History of the Anti-Mission Movement, 1800–1840. New York: Routledge, 2004.
McKivigan, John R., and Mitchell Snay, eds. Religion and the Antebellum Debate over Slavery. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Noll, Mark A. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, chapters 7–11. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992.
Oliver, Robert W. History of the English Calvinistic Baptists 1771–1892: From John Gill to C. H. Spurgeon, chapters 9–14. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2006.
Snay, Mitchell. Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Wayland, Francis, and Richard Fuller. Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution, new ed. Edited by Nathan A. Finn and Keith Harper. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008.
1. Describe David Benedict’s understanding of the theological transformation of Baptists in the early nineteenth century. How would you assess the phrase “methods may change but the message never does”?
2. Explain the establishment of the Free Will Baptists. What were their key doctrinal distinctives? How did the New Hampshire Confession reflect interaction with Free Will Baptist teachings?
3. What was the antimission movement? Who were the key figures, and what were their major concerns? Suppose the antimission movement became the dominant strand of Baptist thinking—what areas of contemporary Baptist life would be affected or no longer exist?
4. Evaluate how Missionary Baptists and Old School Baptists determined their level of success. What is problematic with each approach? Can you provide an alternative to understanding how a church or denomination might measure its success?
5. What motivated Alexander Campbell to begin a new movement after leaving the Baptists? In what way was the formation of the Disciples of Christ an ironic twist on his concerns? Explain how the phrase “no creed but the Bible” can be helpful and/or harmful to Christians today.
6. Who were the Seventh-day Adventists? How were they established? What were their core convictions? What distinguishes them from Seventh Day Baptists?
7. How did Southern Baptists and other Southern evangelicals justify slavery during this period? How would you respond to a person who dismisses Christianity because of its involvement in buying and selling people as slaves?
8. How did Baptist abolitionists respond to the practice of slavery among Christians? How and when did Southern Baptists formally put their history with slavery behind them?
9. Evaluate William B. Johnson’s rationale for the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. Was it possible for Southerners to conduct missions apart from the question of slavery? What ramifications do you believe exist today because of American involvement in slavery?