Baptists and Disciples in North Carolina, 1840s-90s

Beginning in the late 1840s and culminating in the '70s, the Churches of Christ in North Carolina and certain leaders among liberal Baptist churches in the state set out to promote the unity of all believers through greater cooperation.[1] At the 1849 meeting of the Disciples held at Kinston that year, the delegates appointed John P. Dunn and Josephus Latham, both considered "irenic" ministers, to attend the next gathering of the Chowan Baptist Association. The same meeting of the Disciples was attended by Dr. S. J. Wheeler, a leader among the Baptists of the region. Wheeler announced plans for the opening of a Baptist girls' school. The news was welcomed by the Disciple delegates who recommended patronage of the school, offered to supply two trustees, and invited Wheeler to solicit support among Disciple congregations. In 1854, John T. Walsh, a Disciple itinerant minister, preached for many of the Baptist churches in the Chowan Association by their invitation. Yet nothing like complete merger ever occurred. Not all Baptist leaders favored these developments. Staff writers for the Biblical Recorder, an arm of the Baptists in North Carolina, published several articles criticizing the Disciples. Walsh fired back in the pages of his monthly magazine.[2]

The relationship between Disciples and Union Baptists in North Carolina presents a different picture. Between the late 1850s and early '90s, Disciple beliefs completely took over most Union Baptist congregations. In 1858, ten counties in eastern North Carolina were home to a total of fifty Union Baptist congregations with 4,300 members. By 1892, only thirteen of those churches survived with 442 members. The majority of the congregations and individuals lost by the Union Baptists had been absorbed by the Disciples.[3] And most of the Union Baptist ministers defected to the Disciples. Among them was Isaac L. Chestnutt, Meta's older brother.[4]

Notes

[1] Charles Crossfield Ware, North Carolina Disciples of Christ (St. Louis, MO: Christian Board of Publication, 1927), 98. Ware explains that at the time, members of these congregations were called Disciples of Christ, while congregations were called Churches of Christ.

[2] Ibid., 98-100.

[3] Ibid., 101-02.

[4] Ibid., 106.

Origin of the Baptists in America

What is now the Baptist denomination emerged from English Puritanism around the dawn of the seventeenth century. Similar to the sixteenth-century Anabaptists on the continent of Europe, English Baptists insisted on the immersion of penitent believers, as opposed to the sprinkling of infants.[1] True to their Puritan ancestry, the early sect took up the motifs of restoration. For example, early Baptist leader John Smyth (1570-1612), a radical dissenter from the Church of England, said he was seeking to restore "the worship and ministry of the Church, to the primitive Apostolic institution from which as yet it is so far distant."[2] Thomas Helwys (1550-1616), another leader among the early English Baptists, claimed that baptizing believers by immersion was the practice of the first-century church and, therefore, met the standard of apostolic Christianity, a conviction that led to the group's name.[3]

Early Baptists divided into two distinct groups. Particular (sometimes called Regular) Baptists upheld a Calvinist doctrine of salvation according to which God chose and predestined certain people to be saved and all others to be damned. By contrast, General Baptists embraced an Arminian doctrine of salvation according to which Christ died for all people, and individuals determined for themselves whether they would be saved or lost. The same distinction can be described from the standpoint of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. Particular Baptists subscribed to a doctrine of limited atonement; the saving power of Christ's death was reserved for those predestined to be saved. General Baptists subscribed to the doctrine of general atonement; Christ died for everyone, so all could be saved.[4]

Through the seventeenth-century, the Baptist movement remained weak in America. Puritanism dominated New England, and Anglicanism controlled most of the colonies further south.[5] There were notable exceptions. In 1639, Roger Williams (1603-83), rejected by the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, established the first Baptist congregation in America at Providence, Rhode Island. Also, in the early 1650s, Henry Dunster (1609-59), the first president of Harvard College, adopted Baptist beliefs about the ordinance of baptism. His change of mind led to his removal from office.[6]

Around the turn of the eighteenth century, Baptist destiny in America began to change. In 1707, five Particular or Regular Baptist congregations representing the colonies of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania came together to form the Philadelphia Baptist Association.[7]  As Baptist historian Harry L. McBeth explains, an association "is a regional grouping of churches designed for fellowship, mutual guidance and cooperation in missions and other endeavors," and forming one is a Baptist tradition that reaches back to in England in the 1640s.[8] The association at Philadelphia, which still meets to this day, was not the first in America. Yet, it was significant for three reasons. First, it enabled American Baptists "to launch a vigorous missionary effort."[9] It also gave definition to the Baptist movement in America by publishing its Philadelphia Confession of Faith, "a modified version of the Westminster Confession, along with A Short Treatise of Church Discipline."[10] Finally, in 1764, the association sponsored the founding of a Baptist college in Rhode Island, today's Brown University.[11]. By then, the riveting sermons, ecstatic revivals, and published works of what was later called the Great Awakening had long since sparked incredible growth among Baptists in America so that congregations in the Philadelphia Association reached from southern New England all the way to Virginia.[12]

Notes

[1] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 171-72; Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 82; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Viking, 2009), 653.

[2] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 82. See also B. L. Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A." in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 110.

[3] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 82; Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A.," 110.

[4] Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, 171-73; Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 82. Although Calvinism held sway in seventeenth-century France, Switzerland, and Scotland, the picture was different in the Netherlands and England. In England, according to Philip Benedict, Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 314, Arminianism had been anticipated by Peter Baro who “left behind at Cambridge a number of loyal, if cautious, disciples, notably Lancelot Andrewes and the Regius professor of divinity John Overall.” As time went on, “positions . . . bearing the labels Arminian and Calvinist would wage a continuing and roughly equal struggle for supremacy within English theology” (316). This helps to explain the competing positions among early English Baptists.

[5] Edwin Scott Gaustad and Philip L. Barlow, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 357.

[6] Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A," 110-11; Ahlstrom, Religious History, 174. On Roger Williams, see Henry Warner Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious Biography, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 155-56. On Henry Dunster, see Ibid., 155-56.

[7] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 83; Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A.," 111.

[8] H. L. McBeth, "Philadelphia Baptist Association," in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 895.

[9] Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A.," 111.

[10] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 83. See also McBeth, "Philadelphia Baptist Association," 895.

[11] McBeth, "Philadelphia Baptist Association," 895.

[12] Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A," 111.

"Timothy" on Christian Communion and the Lord's Supper, The Christian Messenger, 1828 (Part 2 of 2)

My first post about a certain series in The Christian Messenger, written by "Timothy," and dealing with the Lord's Supper, took up preliminary questions.

To repeat, our best evidence indicates that the author of the three articles, "Timothy," was one Thomas Smith. In addition, the evidence suggests that Smith was a leader in the early-nineteenth century Christian movement associated with the names Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell. Apparently, Smith was a Kentuckian who, at the time he wrote this series, served as a preacher in Lexington. In fact, he was an old friend and associate of Stone's, and also was acquainted with Alexander Campbell. So, it is reasonable to suppose that Thomas Smith was present when, on New Year's Day, 1832, at the Hill Street Church in Lexington, Kentucky, "Raccoon" John Smith and Barton W. Stone shook hands, symbolically uniting two early-American restoration movements.

On that occasion, John Smith called upon the assembled to no longer be "Campbellites or Stoneites, New Lights or Old Lights, or any other kind of lights." If believers would simply come together on the basis of the Bible alone, that would provide "all the light we need."[1] Having established the context of Smith's three articles, then, we turn our attention to the material itself.

Timothy, "The Communion of Christians at the Lord's Table--No. I." The Christian Messenger 2, no. 12 (October 1828), 271-75.

In his first article, Smith, writing as "Timothy," begins with the question, "Who have a divine right to partake of the Lord's Supper?" (271).

Smith observes that "Paedo-baptists" practice open communion, while Baptists do not. I take the author's mention of Paedo-baptists as a reference primarily to Methodists and Presbyterians, two prominent denominations in the South and West at that time. Both groups practiced infant baptism. Of course, the same could be said about Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists. But they were not nearly as prominent at that time and place. (See Smith's own designations on p. 273).

By contrast, Baptists, at least the fellowship known as "United Baptists," practice close(d) communion. Smith announces his conclusion: when it comes to the practical question of open versus closed communion, the right way lies somewhere between these two extremes, "which, I conceive, all christians [sic] would do well to avoid" (271).

Smith asserts that the practice of open communion by a "sect" is inconsistent. For, by definition, a sect establishes strict qualifications for membership. And, a sect treats all who do not meet those qualifications as outsiders. Smith raises the question of why "Paedo-baptists" practice open communion. He answers that the practice attempts to ingratiate those who are not a part of the sect, with the hope that this will bring the outsider around to appreciating and perhaps joining them. Essentially, as they invite people who do not subscribe to their creed to share the Lord's Supper with them, they pray:

O Lord, our creed contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;--we beseech thee, therefore, convert our neighbors and the world to our sect (272).

But, Smith writes, the practice is entirely inconsistent, because when Methodists and Presbyterians serve the Lord's Supper to all sorts of believers, they admit in practice that members of other groups are genuine Christians, the children of God. Thus, it is as if Christ has a Presbyterian Church, a Methodist Church, a United Baptist Church, and so on. The "free communion" of the Paedo-baptists is, thus, inconsistent. Furthermore, it is less than honest, "a mere sectarian engine" (272). So long as these groups cleave to their cherished sectarian names and human creeds, their claims to ecumenicism are, at best, temporary, hollow, and ineffectual.

Smith celebrates that there are thousands of people "in the different sects" who deplore current conditions "in the church." His critical remarks do not apply to those people, he writes, for they are the very ones who recognize and resist the problem (272-73).

At this point, Smith transitions into the second half of his article, in which he draws a comparison between Christianity in the Roman Empire and anti-sectarian Christianity in the contemporary world. He states that in the Roman Empire, all religions were welcome and encouraged, provided that were not seditious or intolerant; provided that they did not deny the legitimacy of other religions or speak against Rome authority.

When Christianity came onto the scene, it did both. Christians denied the legitimacy of every other religious persuasion. Christians were absolutely convinced that they were following the truth. And, they spoke and lived as though they truly meant it. Quoting his source on Roman history, Smith writes

They (the christians) dared to ridicule the absurdities of the Pagan superstition, and they were ardent and assiduous in gaining proselytes to the truth. Nor did they only attack the religion of Rome, but also all the different shapes and forms under which superstition appeared in the various countries where they exercised their ministry (274).[2]

Consequently, all religious and imperial power came together in an attempt to destroy Christianity. What else might explain the deadly persecution of the church from the New Testament era to the time of Constantine?

Then, Smith draws his analogy. The various modern religious sects tend to get along just fine with one another, even to the point of claiming communion with each other as they openly serve the Lord's Supper to members of any mainstream group. But, if a movement should emerge that stands consistently against all of the sects with their creeds and dogmas, at that moment all of the groups will line up together in strong opposition to them.

Smith intimates that this is exactly what has happened in his own time. Paedo-baptists and all other sectarians have lined up against mere "Christians," believers who reject all systems of theology and human traditions, and who insist on the authority of the Bible alone. Leaders of the sects have made themselves the enemies of "the sons of religious liberty" (274).

Hence, those who have christian courage, fortitude and piety enough to stand up and oppose the desolating tide of popular and and [sic] fashionable religion, are every where (like the ancient christians) spoken against (275).

Timothy, "The Communion of Christians at the Lord's Table--No. II." The Christian Messenger 3, no. 1 (November 1828), 11-14.

Having identified in his first article the inconsistencies of the "Paedo-baptists," Thomas Smith now turns to to the Baptists and their practice of closed communion. Against such practice, Smith states, he has three objections:

First, Baptists teach that faith in Christ and immersion in water are the two essential requirements for becoming a child of God. If one has this status, of course he or she should be welcome to partake of the Lord's Supper. But, writes Smith, the group known as "United Baptists" withhold the Lord's Supper from "Separate Baptists," even though all of their members, like other sorts of Baptists, believe in Christ and have been baptized! Smith adds that United Baptists treat not only Separates but also other sorts of Baptists in the same way. In fact, there are at least potentially many others who would qualify as children of God according to the Baptist understanding, who would be denied the Lord's Supper by United Baptists. Thus, in this regard, the United Baptists are as rigid as the Roman Catholics.

Second, writes Smith, there are sometimes more differences among the United Baptists than there are between United Baptists and other groups. How ironic! So then, how can their practice of closed communion be consistent? As it is, their distinctions are in fact completely inconsistent, obviously sectarian. Apparently, their rule is, only if one is in the good graces of a United Baptist congregation is that believer worthy to partake of the Lord's Supper. If not, then one should be debarred from the Supper.

Third, the United Baptist practice of closed communion forces them to say, in effect, that they are the only Christians. Otherwise, how could they insist on closed communion?

The Baptists are thus hung on the horns of a dilemma: they teach that anyone who comes to the Lord as they have are thereby true children of God. At the same time, they teach that only members in good standing of United Baptist congregation should take the Lord's Supper. While their doctrine of salvation is biblical, their observance of the Lord's Supper is sectarian. Smith concludes, then, that the United Baptists will never be relieved of their problem until "they abandon the ground they occupy" (14).

Timothy, "The Communion of Christians at the Lord's Table--No. III." The Christian Messenger 3, no. 2 (December 1828), 33-37.

Having dealt with both Paedo-baptists and Baptists in the first two installments of his series, in the third and final installment Thomas Smith sets out to explain his own convictions.

Interestingly, he uses the phrase "the ancient order of things" and identifies the Lord's Supper is "an ordinance of the Church." Smith states that the church should "spread the Lord's table," believing and knowing that there are Christians, pious and God-fearing people, among the various sects (33). He goes so far as to say that many unimmersed "Paedo-baptists" certainly are true Christians, as their lives and devotion attest:

For who that has had any considerable acquaintance and intercourse with religious society can doubt  the piety of many Paedo-Baptists? The contrary opinion is too shocking to be admitted. The purity of many of their hearts, evinced by the holiness of their lives, proclaims them loudly and clearly to be the children of God. Their humility, the benevolence, their humanity, and unreserved devotion to the interests of Christianity, present many of them as patterns of piety and good works, whom, even those who have been immersed, would do well to imitate (34). 

Their error is not one of will, but of understanding. They therefore have every right to the Lord's table. Citing 2 Corinthians 8:12--"For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not"--Smith concludes that the Lord does not demand of people an understanding that they do not have. Rather, they are judged by the Lord according to the understanding they do have (35).

But how or why would someone be ignorant of the will of God? Smith answers that the King James Bible does not translate the word that means immerse as such. Instead, that translation consistently uses the much more pliable word baptize. Paedo-baptists have been taught by their revered teachers that their sprinkling as infants matches that meaning of baptize. These people, Smith suggests, are stuck in Babylon. They might not make it out of Babylon as soon as one would like. Human nature being what it is, who would expect that they would? Not to mention that those who have been immersed as believers most assuredly have their own set misunderstandings.

But what about the Baptists, asks Smith? They would likely say, "If we take the position of 'Timothy,' how will we ever convince a Paedo-baptist that there is something defective about his understanding? We must exclude him until he learns what is true, agrees with the doctrine and follows it.

Smith rejects such thinking and its practical approach because, he says, the excluded Paedo-baptist will not feel challenged by rejection. Rather, he will feel disrespected. He will conclude that those who deny him the Supper must not recognize his true piety and Christian character.  In other words, the United Baptist approach is bound to backfire. On the other hand, if a Paedo-baptist is received as a brother at the Lord's table, then

he feels the cords of Christian affection binding him to you; he has confidence in you, and therefore every avenue to his mind is open to you; and thus you pave the way to his conversion to the truth (37).

Four Observations

For me, this series written by Thomas Smith provokes at least four observations.

First, although judging from its title this series might seem to be primarily about the "Lord's Supper," in fact it has everything to do with that other phrase: "Christian Communion." Here, those words clearly refer to what is sometimes called "fellowship." Smith's leading question, "Who have a divine right to partake of the Lord's Supper?" does not address typical questions like frequency of the Lord's Supper, the meaning of the ordinance, etc. Much more broadly, Smith is asking, Who is a Christian? The practical concern is the issue of how a church's quiet observance of the Lord's Supper loudly responds to that question. What does the church's practice imply about what identifies a true Christian?

Second, the central question in Smith's series is two-sided. That is, it not only asks about the Christian identity of individuals, more to the point it asks about the character of the movement of which Smith is a part. He seeks to raise and respond to the question, Will we "Christians" (or "Disciples" or "Reformers") practice open or closed communion, or will we take a third alternative? That is to say, the series is not so much about the Christian identity of individuals. Rather, it deals with the Christian identity of the "Christians."

Third, Smith's rejection of both open and closed communion indicates that the practice in many, likely most, of today's Restoration churches regarding the Lord's Supper reaches all the way back to the very first generation of the movement. Many restorationists today have heard and repeated statements like, "It is not our supper, it is the Lord's Supper" and "We neither invite nor debar." Such mottoes do not fully explain the rationale behind the custom to which they point. Such is the nature of mottoes. Yet, these words do express and emphasize an approach to the Lord's Supper that is consistent with the goal of being Christians only, while never claiming to be the only Christians.

In my own experience growing up among the acappella Churches of Christ, though we did not repeat the mottoes I have quoted here, we essentially followed them. In the congregations of my youth, it was understood that the Lord's Supper was for baptized believers. It was also understood to be a duty and a blessing for Christians to partake. Yet, no one was especially welcomed or discouraged to participate. Individuals made the decision for themselves.

Fourth, it appears that one reason why the Stone and Campbell movements were able to converge sometime around the early 1830s is that they took the same view of Christian identity, the same view of communion or fellowship in the broadest meaning of those words.

Famously, in the pages of the 1837 The Millennial Harbinger, Alexander Campbell replied to "a conscientious sister" who wrote from Lunenburg, Virginia. A brief quote from letter reveals the essential question: "Does the name of Christ or Christian belong to any but those who believe the gospel, repent, and are buried by baptism into the death of Christ?"

In his reply, Campbell wrote:

But who is a Christian? I answer, Every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to this measure of knowledge of his will.

Later, and reminiscent of Thomas Smith's statements from nearly a decade before in The Christian Messenger, Campbell made the following comparison:

Should I find a Pedobaptist more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than a Baptist, or one immersed on a profession of the ancient faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth much. Did I act otherwise I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians.[3]

Notes

[1] Lester G. McAllister and William E. Tucker, Journey in Faith: A History of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1975), pp. 151-52. The full discussion of attempts to unite the "Disciples" and "Christians" appears on pp. 146-55.

[2] Along this line, the eminent historian G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), points out that Christianity of the second to fourth centuries invented the words martyr and martyrdom, and that these words uniquely belong to the early church. For a good overview of this period, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Viking Press, 2009), ch. 5. MacCulloch offers a fine description of how, to the Romans, the boldness of the early Christians seemed like a provocation, how their aloofness created suspicion, and how their distinctive use of political language represented an affront to imperial authority. The Christians worshiped none of the traditional gods. Were they atheists? In their assemblies, it was rumored, they ate flesh and drank blood. Were they cannibals? Suspicion and resentment sometimes resulted in the martyrdom of Christians, terrible ordeals that generated for the church more and more heroes. One can only wonder why MacCulloch ignores one of the earliest and most-interesting episodes in the history of Rome's various encounters with early Christianity: the conflict over the Cult of the Emperor in the province of Asia during the reign of Domitian, the unmistakable back story of the New Testament's Book of Revelation.

[3] For the initial exchange between the lady from Lunenburg and Campbell, see The Millennial Harbinger, New Series, Vol. 1 (1837), 411-14.

"Holy Whine" at Pulpit Rock: Connecticut Connections to the Bible-Belt South

Born in Boston in 1706, Shubal Stearns lies buried more than 600 miles to the south and west, in the little town of Staley, North Carolina. Between those two places--at Tolland, Connecticut--Stearns underwent a spiritual transformation. The changes he embraced in Tolland led him to lay part of the foundation of a well-known feature of our modern American religious landscape: the Bible-Belt South.

The Stearns family moved from Boston to Tolland in 1715, when Shubal was still just a boy. An active member of the Congregational church, in 1727 he married a local girl, Sarah Johnson. Years later, his life forever changed with the coming of what we now call the First Great Awakening.

By the 1730s, Puritan churches seemed stale and formalistic. Preachers of the Great Awakening challenged the status quo with emotional sermons that called hearers to a vibrant, all-consuming faith. Stearns heard the most famous evangelist of them all, George Whitefield, when he preached in Connecticut in 1745. Immediately, Stearns identified himself as a New Light, someone who welcomed the message of the revivalists. Even more, he sided with the Separates, radical New Lights who felt they could no longer be members of their spiritually cold and lifeless congregations.

With no church facilities, Separates had to decide where they would gather for worship. In Tolland, they met in the Stearns home on Charter Road. Stearns himself served as minister of the congregation, which grew through the years. But in 1751, the group divided. Some, like Stearns and his family, embraced the Baptist teaching that church membership is only for those who have experienced believers' baptism, adult immersion upon a profession of Christian faith. Soon after he was immersed, Stearns organized a "Separate Baptist" church in Tolland.


Charter Road in Tolland, Connecticut

Weather permitting, people would sometimes gather at Pulpit Rock in Tolland, where they listened to the evangelist preach. Stearns was small in stature. But when preaching, what he lacked in height he more than made up for with over-sized gestures, a piercing gaze, unrestrained emotion, and a sing-song delivery some called "the holy whine." Many listeners who at first didn't care for his style eventually warmed up to his obvious sincerity and devotion.

Three years after his conversion to the Baptist persuasion, Stearns concluded that he should take his message to the colonies that lay south and west of Connecticut. This was part of a historic trend. As scholar Christine Heyrman explains, "evangelical revivals in the northern colonies . . . inspired some converts to become missionaries to the American South." Stearns's brother-in-law, Daniel Marshall of Windsor, was also a Separate Baptist preacher. In 1754, the two men moved their families to Cacapon, Virginia, near present-day Winchester.

After working for months with only moderate response, they received word that people living in the Piedmont section of North Carolina would ride long distances just to hear a sermon. So it was that in late 1755, a company of fifteen people, mostly Stearns and Marshall and their families, migrated to Sandy Creek in what is now Randolph County, North Carolina, where they immediately began a church.

Pulpit Rock in Tolland, Connecticut, one-time gathering place for Separates.
Shubal Stearns sometimes preached here.

With Sandy Creek as his home base, Stearns traveled through parts of North Carolina and Virginia preaching sermons, training evangelists, and planting Separate Baptist congregations. By the time Stearns died in 1771, there were 42 Separate Baptist congregations served by 125 ministers in North Carolina and Virginia. In effect, the migration of the Stearns and Marshall families transplanted the First Great Awakening from New England, and specifically central Connecticut, to the southern back country.

According to the late Sydney Ahlstrom, a Harvard professor and the unofficial dean of American religious historians, those few Separate Baptists who came from central Connecticut were critical to "Baptist expansion throughout the South and the Old Southwest." That's no small difference considering that the dozens of Baptist groups in America today constitute the nation's largest Protestant family.

If I get to another post about this topic, I'll want to say a bit more about the connections between Separate Baptists in the South, like Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall, and the American Restoration Movement, associated with names like Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell.

Some Sources

Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. See Chapter 20, "Evangelical Expansion in the South," especially pp. 317-24.

Bowden, Henry Warner. Dictionary of American Religious Biography. 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. A brief entry on Shubal Stearns appears on p. 514.

Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. For cultural background to Stearns's "holy whine," see the discussion of "Massachusetts Speech Ways: Yankee Twang and Norfolk Whine," pp. 57-62. See also Fischer's reference to old British folkways according to which, at least in England's North Midlands, people sometimes assembled "in the open at a standing-stone," p. 446.

Garrett, Paul E. Where Saints Have Trod in the Expansion: Volume One. Barberton, OH: Garrett Publishing, 2009. See especially pp. 21-23.

Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. See esp. pp. 10-11.

Hughes, Arthur H. and Morse S. Allen. Connecticut Place Names. Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1976. This unique, outstanding resource does not include a listing for a Pulpit Rock in Tolland. Yet, it does list Pulpit Rocks in other towns, indicating that some of them were gathering places for religious activities.

Humphrey, Carol Sue. "Stearns, Shubal." In American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 20:597-98. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Taylor, C. E. "Elder Shubal Stearns." North Carolina Baptist Historical Papers 2 (1897): 99-105.

Waldo, Loren P. The Early History of Tolland. An Address Delivered before the Tolland County Historical Society, at Tolland, Conn., on the 22nd day of August an 27th day of September, 1861. Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Company, 1861.

A Note of Thanks

Historians publish their writings under their names. But as we see in the "Acknowledgements" sections of their books, they never carry out nor complete the work all by themselves. Far from it. When it comes to communicating history, we should not imagine that the job gets done by Lone Rangers. Instead, we should recognize that collaborative networks of people make it happen. Thank you to George Caruthers for taking me to Tolland, and also to Carl Sallstrom who listened to my story about Pulpit Rock and who eventually located it. Today, the land on which Pulpit Rock stands is owned by Lloyd Bahler and family. Lloyd was nice enough, on the spur of the moment, to show the three of us around the Bahler family property. Thank you!