History conference draws wide array of Baptists to celebrate diversity

Posted: 8/09/07

History conference draws wide
array of Baptists to celebrate diversity

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. (ABP)—Perhaps the most notable thing about the recent “Baptist History Celebration,” held in the mother church of Southern Baptists, is that it happened at all.

But historians from an astonishing array of Baptist groups—liberal, conservative, fundamentalist, moderate, African-American, Caucasian, Latino, Northern, Southern, Calvinist and Arminian—gathered at the First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C., to celebrate and learn more about the diversity they say has characterized the Baptist movement in the United States.

image_pdfimage_print

Posted: 8/09/07

History conference draws wide
array of Baptists to celebrate diversity

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. (ABP)—Perhaps the most notable thing about the recent “Baptist History Celebration,” held in the mother church of Southern Baptists, is that it happened at all.

But historians from an astonishing array of Baptist groups—liberal, conservative, fundamentalist, moderate, African-American, Caucasian, Latino, Northern, Southern, Calvinist and Arminian—gathered at the First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C., to celebrate and learn more about the diversity they say has characterized the Baptist movement in the United States.

“The organizers—or I should say the magicians—who put all this together deserve our heartiest congratulations,” said Edwin Gaustad, an American Baptist historian, during the conference’s closing keynote address. “Baptist ecumenicity is sometimes a movement and sometimes a magical moment. I suggest this is just such a moment.”

The meeting bore out Gaustad’s observation. It began with an admiring profile of English Baptist pastor John Gill—a hero to neo-Calvinist Baptists—from a conservative Canadian Baptist who is slated to begin teaching this fall at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Shortly after, attendees heard from an American Baptist who is currently teaching at a Canadian Baptist seminary but who has also served on the Baylor University faculty. William Brackney noted that Baptists, from their roots in 17th-century English separatism, always have encompassed diverse theological views on Calvinism and other doctrines.

“We come from a very diverse background. It should surprise no one that we are a very diverse tradition today,” said Brackney, who teaches at Acadia Divinity College and is considered one of the world’s most authoritative Baptist historians.

The early Baptist movement in the United States was centered in the Northeast, and particularly New England, where Calvinistic Puritans governed all aspects of life, both civil and religious. Since the earliest U.S. Baptists had few confessional statements and differed from congregation to congregation on issues as fundamental as the nature of God’s sovereignty, Brackney said, “Imagine what this array of theology looked like to the Puritan colonists.”

As the early Baptists in the urban centers of the Northeast began to prosper and build larger churches, Brackney continued, many of them became increasingly concerned with “looking like good theological citizens” to their Puritan rulers. So they developed a form of Calvinism and stoic forms of worship.

These urban Baptists also began to codify theological confessions as well as establish more organized denominational bodies. The conference marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, the first in the New World.

The forms of Baptist theology dominant in the urban centers of the Northeast also exerted influence in Charleston, with the first church founded by colonists who had moved from Kittery, Maine. The Charleston Baptist Association would later become the first such association in the South.

Likewise, a “Charleston tradition” in worship styles among Southern Baptists developed out of the host church, with an emphasis on education, structure and order that would make many Presbyterians feel at home. Meanwhile, simultaneously, the “Sandy Creek tradition” began developing out of the Sandy Creek Baptist Church near Asheboro, N.C. That style emphasized emotional worship experiences and the unpredictable movement of the Holy Spirit.

The conference explored Baptists’ worship history as well, with features on the development of Baptist hymnody. Irvin Murrell, a professor at the Baptist College of Florida, told participants that an examination of early U.S. Baptist hymnals revealed that, despite extreme differences in worship styles between several Baptist groups, the hymnals of Calvinistic, high-church and low-church groups alike contained a common core of agreed-upon hymns.

“We have a multi-polar heritage,” he said. “Those poles are going to pull against each other in a creative tension. Don’t let our multi-polars pull us apart.”

The conference’s host church also played an important role in another distinguishing mark among Baptists—their split into Northern and Southern camps over the issue of slavery. From the very chancel where longtime pastor Richard Furman once cited Scripture to justify the continuation of slavery, and in a sanctuary ringed by a gallery where black members were once required to sit, historians recounted the contributions of African-American Baptists.

“For many years … historians paid little attention to these great souls who labored hard and faithfully for the Lord,” said LeRoy Fitts, one of the nation’s most prominent African-American Baptist historians, in a profile of Lott Carey. Carey is widely regarded as the first black Baptist missionary. His evangelistic work continues to bear fruit in Liberia, Ghana and other West African nations.

“Records indicate that Lott Carey may rightfully be called the father of West African missions,” Fitts said. Carey was born into slavery in Virginia in 1780. In 1807, he became a Christian after hearing a sermon from the slave gallery of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Va. Fitts said a white deacon at the church taught Carey the Bible in a night school for slaves.

By 1815, Carey had earned enough money to purchase his own freedom and that of his children. In 1821, he went to Sierra Leone and then to Liberia. Although his life was cut short by an 1828 explosion, the largest African-American Baptist missionary-sending group still bears his name.

Overall, Brackney said, the many strains of theology, political involvement and worship style in early U.S. Baptist history reveal little conventional unity in the tradition. But, quoting the apostle Paul, he said, “If there is a theological golden cord running through early Baptist life and thought, it is … ‘we confess we know but in part.’“






News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.


We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.

Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.

More from Baptist Standard