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Reformed Baptist History in America Part 1 By Sam Waldron

 We're going to take up an area of church history this morning.
It's the area that some of you know I've been asked to cover in lecture form
for the folk in Flemington, New Jersey this coming Tuesday.
It has to do with what I'm calling Reformed Baptists,
their historical backgrounds in America.
Now that's the subject of church history we'll be taking up this morning.
In dealing with that subject, I want to say something first of all before I get
to an introduction to it specifically, to the justification we're taking up in a
Bible class hour, the whole subject of church history.
For those of you who are here regularly you know that we don't normally do that
but there is biblical justification and more
much more biblical justification than if we took this whole hour
we could turn you to. But I want you to turn to one passage that we've been
looking at frequently in the last several weeks
that distinctly concerns the whole doctrine of the church
of Christ and that's Matthew chapter 28. Matthew chapter 28 and I'm particularly
concerned with the last phrase of verse 20.
Jesus giving the great commission has said to his 11 apostles,
all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth
go therefore and make disciples of all the nations
baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit teaching
them these nations that you're going to make disciples out of
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you
and lo I am with you always even to the consummation of the age and the
phrase the consummation of the age is in the context of the gospel of
Matthew and the entire new testament a clear reference to the second coming of
Christ and here then is a promise of the risen
Christ to whom all authority has been given in heaven and earth
that he would continue to help and to be present with his disciples
as they took his gospel to the ends of the earth now this is a promise
that in the folds of church history we can
if we have the mind of Christ and the enlightenment of the word of God
discern the power the activity and the presence of the risen Christ
so that in studying church history our true goal ought to be
to discern there the activity of the risen Christ
as he continued to through his people teach nations to observe all that he has
commanded we could turn to other passages the
word of God that show that there will be a process of gradual development
and understanding on the part of the church of Christ as they come to more and
more of a distinct self-conscious understanding of different
facets of the word of God but this passage alone teaches us the
validity of studying church history because in it we may observe
the activity of the risen Christ now that being the case
we're going to take up this morning uh i'm gonna have to straighten this again
i'm sure reformed baptist
in reform back reform baptist their historical backgrounds
in america
and first of all i want to say some things by way of introduction
first of all something by way of a definition
what do i mean by reformed baptist well some of most of you would have a
fairly distinct idea of what those phraseology that phraseology means
this is a reformed baptist church the distinctly reformed baptist church of
grand rapids and i intend by the term reformed
baptist to designate those churches and individuals which
have arisen in approximately the last 30 years
in the united states of america and also in other countries
but we're concentrating on those in america
uh those churches and individuals which have arisen in the last 30 years the
united states which hold to the confession of faith
we've been studying this hour the london baptist confession of faith of 1689
and which often although not universally describe themselves as
reformed baptist so there is this movement this uh group
of churches and individuals of fairly a small character
right now but that have arisen from nothing over
the last 30 years in the united states and the thing that marks them out is
that they hold that confession of faith held by this church
the london confession of faith the london baptist confession of faith
of 1689 now that's my definition of the word reformed baptist
but now a caution
you notice i've livid it limited my theme to reform baptist
in america but it is impossible first of all i want to say to completely
separate american baptist and church history
and that of the british isles at many many different points american church
history and american baptist church history will
be directly dependent on what has happened in the british isles in england
and wales and scotland and ireland and that i want to say so that you don't
get the idea that you can treat america as a totally
self-sufficient entity in church history you can't do that that wouldn't be right
and it's going to be evident again and again that there's tremendous
importance to be placed on events taking in england as affecting american
baptist yet yet we are americans we live in america
and american religious history is distinct very distinct from the church
history of every other country in the world
and thus there is a propriety a legitimacy of singling out the theme of
reformed baptist in america now
that leads me to a third word of introduction
and that's my mission today what am i out to
accomplish well my thesis is something uh like this i believe that reformed
baptist christians if i can put it that way
are strangers in a strange land to use the biblical phraseology
i think we're strangers in a strange land and
i think more many of us are becoming more and more aware
as we interact on different levels with american culture just how
strange it is to be a reformed baptist christian strange
enough to be a christian more strange to be a reformed baptist christian
in america and by showing you why you are strange i hope to provide you with
reasons not to be embarrassed by your strangeness
because normally strangeness is a cause for embarrassment isn't it
but i hope to give you reasons not to be embarrassed or stumbled by that
based upon a very clear understanding of uh the legitimacy of what we believe on
the basis of the word of god from church history in its place in
church history i also hope to prepare you
for the offense which others will take at you
because if you uh believe the word of god
especially as it's come to expression and to be held by reformed baptist in
america you are going to have people taking
offense at you and just as the apostle paul uh said to
the thessalonians you're suffering affliction aren't you
well i told you before that that was going to happen didn't i
and why did he tell them before so that they might be prepared for what was
inevitably going to come to people that were as strange as they were
in the midst of the first century a roman empire well
reformed baptists are very strange creatures indeed in the midst of the
20th century american empire and we are going to have to take that
into account and expect others to take offense at us and i want
to show you uh why that's the case and finally
finally i hope that a sense of mission of the mission that and the stewardship
the reformed baptist with all the truth that god has shown them
have in america today a sense of the mission
that god has given us and of course i don't mean to be unduly
exclusivistic but a sense of the mission which anyone that believes the truth of
the word of god uh in the uh in the context of the great
heritage of truth that god has taught his church
over the ages the great stewardship that we have
in that way and for that reason now uh then what will our direction be
well here's our overall outline
we're going to talk about the rise of
particular baptist in america then we're going to talk about the
debasement or the debasing of that means the um
kind of polluting would be the best word of particular baptist in america
and then finally a third point and i'm quite confident will not cover all of
this this morning in the sunday school hour
will be the rise of reformed baptist in america so we're gonna our first two
points have to do with what we're calling particular baptist
and then our third point will have to do with the rise of reformed
baptist now we come to take up the rise of particular
baptist now i'm very conscious and i was thinking
about this and a little bit hesitant for this reason
i'm going to move this back a little bit hesitant for this reason of
taking up church history in the sunday school hour because
inevitably in teaching church history i'm going to have to use a lot
of names and words that since many of you have never had a
church history course at all let alone one on american church
history you won't recognize will you i mean you the essence of learning is
somebody telling you something you don't know
so to learn you have to learn things you don't know already right
well i'm gonna have to use words and names that are going to be strange now
here's what i want us to agree to do i'm going to try to define every word or
name that i use that i think you won't understand
but i may miss a few and if i miss a few you raise your hand and you tell me okay
and then i'll define them for you because that's a great part of teaching
church history and teaching uh christians about their
heritage in the christian faith as god has led his people over 20 centuries
simply learning different names and words so please if you don't understand
the word raise your hand and tell me because i'm not intentionally trying to
bowl you over with my great scholarship even if it did exist
all right
now we're going to take up the rise of particular baptists
that raises very immediately the question what is a particular
baptist right i told you we'd be using words you didn't understand now i think
there are some out there that can define for me as well as i could a
particular baptist what's a particular baptist who can
help us with that carl
the calvinist
all right particular baptists were called particular
baptists because they were calvinists to use the word
that's very scary word for some people particular baptists
recall that because they believed in unconditional election
they believed in what was known as particular redemption some people call
that limited atonement and they believed in irresistible grace
and the perseverance of the saints and the total depravity of man
and for that all those reasons they were called particular baptists
as opposed to another branch of baptists that developed about the same time
that were called general baptists because they did not believe in
particular redemption or unconditional election they believed in
general redemption they believed that christ died for
everybody in general and nobody in particular
all right now that's a particular baptist a particular baptist is one who
holds to particular redemption and is therefore calvinistic frequently
if not universally particular baptist embraced that very confession held by
this church the london baptist confession of faith
now the london baptist confession of faith as i've told you in times past
was actually written in 1677 but they couldn't publish it at the time because
baptists were not allowed to exist formally in england in
1677 it was only 12 years later when
toleration came under under the reign of william
and mary the dutch the dutch people that had been
imported to rule uh england and a protestant way
that in 1689 the london confession of faith was published openly in england
and that's the confession that particular baptist held that was written
by them and we'll say more about where
particular baptists came from later today
this morning but now the standard particular baptist confession of faith
then was the london confession of faith held by this church
but now we want to look first of all at their roots in america
their roots in america well how did particular baptists come to america
that's the question and how did they rise in america well america well first
of all they came here through english
immigration immigration from england now that shouldn't surprise us as most
americans got here eventually that way or from one of the other
countries in europe the english immigration
brought to america the particular baptist tradition
eventually in fact in 1707 there was formed what was known as the
philadelphia baptist association composed of
five churches at the time and this baptist association was formed
and with a couple of minor additions they held to the london baptist
confession of faith that had been published in 1689 in 1742
they they formally adopted this confession of faith
with a couple of minor additions and it became known in america as the
philadelphia confession of faith and i have a copy of it in my library i
could have brought to show you today but that's the first way in which
particular baptists came to the united states
with english immigration so particular baptists that have been raised up
in england sometimes as individuals sometimes whole churches up
left england migrated to america and settled for the most part
in the pennsylvania area or the middle colonies
the reason for that was that they were they were did not have religious freedom
in the southern colonies where the anglican church was the state church
and they did not have religious freedom in the uh
new england colonies where congregationalists were the state
church and so basically because william penn had founded pennsylvania
and given religious liberty there to quakers a lot of other
odd cats uh to use the term ended up there as well and among them
a lot of baptists now uh interesting story it occurs to tell
me about one of the original baptist preachers
particular baptist preachers in the united states
how many people here have ever heard the name benjamin keach
benjamin keach a number of you have benjamin keach wrote a famous
baptist catechism was one of the signers of the
london confession of faith of 1689 as i recall
his son immigrated to the united states and his name was elias keach as i recall
in the philadelphia area he presented himself as a preacher
and at the age of 19 got up to preach his first sermon the fact was that
elias keach was not even converted and never been a member of a church in
england and was not converted when he got up to preach his first sermon
but he was presenting himself as a minister basically to make a living
as the as the indication is and he began to preach
and probably trying to copy his famous father benjamin
and in the middle of that sermon he broke down and weeping
later and confessed that he wasn't even a converted man himself
uh confessed his sin to the people he was preaching to
and later on was actually baptized joined to one of the churches there in
the philadelphia area and eventually did become a famous baptist preacher
in the united states but that's one of the interesting stories
of how the particular baptist tradition was brought to the united states or
connected with it but now there's a second way in which
particular baptists got off the ground in the united states and that's the
great awakening the great awakening was very significant
now that's another word that some of you may not or phrase some of you may not
recognize the great awakening what's the great
awakening who can give me a succinct definition or
description of the great awakening when did it happen who was involved in
it what did it do uh john ottin
all right the great awakening was a great
revival that really spanned two continents it
uh was going began to go on almost simultaneously in the 1730s and 40s
uh in england and america in england um it got off the ground basically with
the preaching of george whitfield in the late 1730s and 40s
there had been a great time of declension after there was toleration
for everybody in a kind of golden age for uh for
protestants and non-conformist in england in the 1690s 17
early 1700s there had gradually been a terrible terrible declension
throughout the english uh culture in england and that was reversed by the
coming of george whitfield and then later after him john wesley and
charles wesley and the whole wesley and methodist
there were two actually two groups of methodists originally whitfield and
methodist and wesley and methodist but that's what happened in england in the
preaching of george whitfield uh in england sparked the great
awakening but already in new england uh there had been a
series of revivals that had taken place under
uh jonathan edwards and his predecessor at northampton massachusetts the
congregational church there named by the name of
stoddard i think it's samuel or is it jonathan
samuel stoddard right uh samuel stoddard and his successor jonathan edwards the
preachers at the uh old puritan congregational church in
northampton massachusetts uh there'd been a series of revivals and when
whitfield came to america a general awakening began to take place
which was known as the great awakening which is really
in a great sense the foundation of the whole religious culture in the united
states there had been christians here very strong christian tradition in new
england but that interest became general and many many
hundreds of thousands of people were brought into the churches through the
1730s 40s 50s 60s and 70s and really
was the first thing that really in a broad sense
brought most of the people in the united states into a kind of christian
consensus if i can call it that an evangelical christian consensus
now what you have to understand was that the main
preachers responsible for the great awakening
were all in the calvinistic tradition whitfield was a calvinist jonathan
edwards was a calvinist the tenants in new england were calvinist
and many many of these preachers especially the ones that were
responsible for the uh preaching and the breakout of the
great awakening in the united states under the hand of god now
were calvinistic in fact armenians were commonly known to oppose the revival
and so if you were an armenian in new england or other places united states
uh that was almost synonymous with being opposed to the great awakening
because of your doctrinal stance and for
and because of the fact that the very great uh
very well known i should say preachers and
christian leaders who were armenian basically opposed the great awakening
because of some of its successes they rejected the whole thing
and so the preachers that found that got the uh
the great awakening were used of god in the great awakening
were basically calvinistic whitfield and others edwards etc the tenants who
were presbyterians now
this new life that was being uh shed from god into the american
nation the young american nation this new life
however as almost always will happen led to the formation especially
in new england massachusetts connecticut where you had the great heartland of the
old puritan congregational movement as they
have formed these state churches and these what they were called bible
commonwealths in massachusetts and in connecticut what happened was a lot
of those churches have become more and more dead in the hundred years
after they've been founded by the very very sincere and genuine and authentic
puritans that came to the united states but they be gradually gradually become
more dead and in in the midst of this great
awakening there was this new injection of spiritual life
in the context of these churches but this led many
in new england particularly to form separatist churches
separatist churches which split from the old congregational churches that have
been originally founded by puritans a hundred years before
now they reacted against these churches because they were dead
but also in or in many cases they were quite dead in their spiritual life
but also because they were state supported because they were state
churches in massachusetts and connecticut in fact there were state
churches in massachusetts and connecticut till the 1830s
but they reacted against these things a lot of the people that were most deeply
awakened by the great awakening in that revival
separated from the old state supported puritan congregational churches in new
england form separatist churches and then what
happened was by the logic of everything they
believed they became baptists many of them
and sometimes all the whole of these separate separating
congregational churches became baptist sometimes
a good deal of the membership would split and become baptist sometimes the
preacher would become a baptist and he would leave and a lot of the
congregation would go with him to start a baptist church there in new england
well that was the source of the second major group of particular
baptists in the united states now you see the
english immigration here and the great awakening the english immigration
and the baptists that came to united states in the pennsylvania area
primarily or as having as that as their center were called
regular baptist believe it or not now those regular baptists really have
very little to do with uh the modern association of baptist churches called
the general association of regular baptists
now i'm sure that that organization took the word over because it was a word that
was used to describe mainstream baptist early in the history of america
but regular baptists were those that held strongly to the london confession
of faith and had a very strict church order
they had worked they had had a long time in england to think about
how baptist churches ought to be run and what baptist churches ought to believe
and they had that all very clearly worked out in their minds and for that
reason they were called regular baptist anybody who wasn't one of them was an
irregular baptist you see well so you had the regular baptist that
basically came from the particular baptist tradition in england
and it migrated the united states but then you had this other group of baptists
that grew up as a result of these people that were deeply affected by the great awakening
began to realize that being a member by baptism as an infant of a state-supported church
was not sufficient to save you began to realize that you had to be converted yourself
and therefore by the whole logic of their position
believing that there ought to be a converted church membership
the pastors ought to be converted if they're going to be pastors
that you have to be converted if you're going to be saved
they began to come to the place where they said well therefore only believers
truly converted people ought to be baptized in members of churches and they became baptists
you see and so you had the rise of what we're known as now you have the regular baptist now
through the great awakening you have the rise of what we're known as the separate baptist
the separate baptist
and they were called the separate baptist for the very clear reason that they separated from
the old puritan congregational churches in new england and that's where they got their started
that they got their start but very soon they became active as a result of the ministry of
men like whitfield and then baptist preachers who followed him whitfield was not himself
he's responsible for the creation of many baptist churches and not directly but indirectly
you have these baptists called the separate baptist now what you have to realize of course
is that both the separate baptist and the regular baptists were basically calvinistic
now let me show you how that works itself out
in the particular in the particular baptist first of all in england are descended from
the english puritans it's kind of faint isn't it
um in england there was this great cleavage between the anglicans those who were the
people who supported the state church of england and those who were puritans now for a while the
anglican church was more or less uh calvinistic and reformed in its theology but very shortly
it began to cease to be that and the puritans emerged and the name puritan indicates what they
were they believed that the state church of england needed to be purified there are all
sorts of remnants of rome that existed in the state church of england that had to be done away
with and what they wanted to do originally was take over the state church of england and purify
it of all its remnants of roman catholicism and introduce a pure reform religion as the state
church of england and these puritans were originally basically presbyterians presbyterians
who believed that there ought to be one state church in england that was basically governed
by a hierarchy of of of presbyteries or consistories presbyteries classies synods
in a general assembly which could basically make rules for all this all the uh churches in england
these people believed in infant and they believed that all churches were connected and that there
ought to be only one church in a state these were the presbyterians in england now presbyterians
nowadays don't believe that for the most part but they did then but gradually as the puritans began
to continue to militate and to agitate and to preach the gospel and they became more and more
influential in the church of england uh they had more and more time too to think about church
government how the church ought to be organized and all the presbyterians began to emerge another
group of puritans called the congregationalist now the congregationalists were different than
the presbyterians they believed that every church ought to be basically self-governing hence they
were called independents that every church ought to be able to govern its own affairs without the
interference of of a hierarchy of some kind whether it were bishops or presbyteries bishops
in the church of england or presbyterians and presbyters and presbyteries in a presbyterian
system but they still believed in infant baptism and still to some extent for a while at least
believed that there ought to be a kind of state church system although with a lot of respect for
local churches but out of the congregationalist in london in the first decade of the 17th century
there was a very uh important congregational church formed in london and that congregational
church was composed of a great many folk and over the years it had at least six daughter churches
and five of those six daughter churches became baptists and that was the origin of the particular
baptist in england the particular baptist were a kind of puritan they were baptist puritans
baptists who believed in the local church who believed in the separation of church and state
who did not believe in state churches and who believed in believers baptism and not the baptism
of infants now that's where the particular baptist in england came from but there's a kind of parallel
for where the particular baptist in england known as regular baptist in the united states
came from and where the separate separate baptist emerged from you remember where the separate
baptist emerged from the state churches of new england were congregational churches but when
were they were touched by the hand of god and the great awakening and when the and the life was
poured into them from on high many of those old congregational churches produced a baptist church
so the baptist basically emerged out of the ranks of the congregationalist puritans what the point
is i'm making is that this whole puritan movement was of course reformed or calvinistic and that
included the particular baptist and therefore their their two wings the regular baptist in
the united states and the separate baptist now that brings me to a second point unless there
are questions i maybe i better ask for questions right there any questions about i kind of whipped
through that you have a basic idea that the baptist the particular baptist came out of
the puritan movement and i was and specifically out of the congregational churches that have
grown up in the 1600s yes steve
yeah that's a good idea um uh henry the eighth was the first one you remember to
reform the church of england basically he was interested in money and getting a divorce from
his wife but to do that he had to he had to told tell the pope to bug off so he took over the
church in england himself that was in the 1530s but then through the uh and that really had very
little to do with anything spiritual or religious but gradually because his only allies were the
people who were protestants the church of england that he had basically proclaimed himself the head
of became more and more infiltrated with protestants and especially reformed protestants
from geneva and from holland and these reformed protestants began more and more to take over the
church until there was basically a reformed consensus in the church of england in the 1570s
and 80s but it was at that point that the puritan party in the 1570s and 80s emerged that were
dissatisfied with the degree of reformation in the church of england and they began to agitate
for a more pure church therefore their enemies called them derisively puritans and they were
basically then saying we need a purified state church and they began to think about the ways
it ought to be purified and gradually that that led to the emergence of the puritan movement
and then it's basically three great church traditions came out of that the presbyterians
the congregationalists and the baptists okay other questions john
it's about the same time and i'm going to talk about that in just a second
uh baptist the baptist churches as we know them and as we that would have any clear relationship
to baptist churches today emerged in the 16 early 1600s in england there are other people that
believed in believers baptism before that but they were peculiar in other ways so that they
were not directly related to baptist as we know them today all right now the next thing we want
to come to is having talked about the rise of particular baptist and their roots in america
to talk about their predominance in america
now within 50 years after 1740 uh that's we remember when the philadelphia confession
of faith was formally adopted by the philadelphia baptist association
within 50 years after 1740 calvinistic baptist had almost buried general or armenian baptist
in america now you have to understand that in the early 1600s there were both general baptist
and armenian baptist or our general baptist or armenian baptist and particular baptist or
calvinistic baptist united states and they really came about the same time perhaps the general
baptist were a little bit earlier but only five or ten years or so they're about equal in strength
but because of the great awakening which is basically calvinistic in character those old
general baptist churches which were pretty weak actually and often tainted by heresy one of the
things that happened among armenian baptist in england is that many of them became unitarians
and denied the deity of jesus christ but they were very weak and very uh unorganized those
general baptists basically were buried by the uh particular baptist the regular baptist and
the separate baptist in the strength that they had gained through the great awakening
and in fact uh many uh uh baptist churches that were basically general baptists were
asked for help from the philadelphia baptist association and they were basically reorganized
along the line of regular baptist churches that happened especially in the south where there was
some general baptist churches and what happened is that those general baptist churches were so
unorganized and so loose that you could be baptized without ever having
to give a confession of being converted before before the church or before the leaders of the
church and so they had many members that were not even converted and a lot of the times the
particular baptists would come in examine the membership because they've been asked to by these
people and basically cut the membership down from 100 to 15 that's what happened in many cases in
the south but because of the great awakening and the power given to calvinistic baptist churches
through that the vast majority of baptists in america became calvinistic and the vast
majority of the churches were after the 1740s now the regular and separate baptist however didn't
always get along very well you can imagine that they had two different perspectives on a lot of
things here the separate baptist they were like they're they're kind of reacting against all that
state old traditional church order in new england and they'd they'd felt the power of god and the
great awakening and so they were they were still calvinistic but they were kind of reacting against
anything too structured and too formal they were just on fire for god going preaching the gospel
every place you know whereas the regular baptist had a great awareness of the importance of a
strict church order and of doctrinal stability and of a confession of faith and so a lot of times the
particular the two groups of particular baptists didn't get along at first but what happened over
the next 50 years is that gradually the two groups began to appreciate each other and you had the
merger of the evangelistic zeal of the separate baptist and of the doctrinal stability and strict
church order of the regular baptist which really produced in the combination of the two of them a
very very strong baptist movement in the united states a particular baptist movement so the
strength of the regulars was their doctrinal stability and strict church order well the
strength of the separates was their evangelistic zeal and basically they came together then
in the later 1700s and worked together in many cases and that brings me and this is maybe as
far as we'll get today to their growth in america their growth in america
now such a combination as i've said led to a tremendous growth of baptists in america
in fact someone has laid out this chart in the year 1660 there were basically four baptist
churches in the united states a couple of them as i recall in rhode island and maybe a couple
up in maine and they were basically mixed both the armenian or general baptist in particular
baptist by the year 1700 there had been a small growth but not that much there were 33 probably
this was growth was mainly due to the immigration of particular baptist into the middle colonies in
pennsylvania the philadelphia area but then you had the coming of the great awakening so that by
1740 40 years later there are 96 baptist churches in the united states and then 40 years later there
are 457 and the thing just keeps going after that till in the early 19th century let's say the 1830s
and 40s the two largest denominations in the united states of general groupings of christians
are the methodist and the baptist and they are they will remain the two largest denominations
in the united states until the great immigrations of the late 1800s bring millions and millions of
roman catholics from europe into the united states and at that point roman catholicism will
become the largest denomination in the united states but till that time baptist and methodist
because of their great evangelistic zeal on the frontier of america will become the two largest
groups of christians now the baptist that we're talking about now in those early 1800s are
primarily and in the broad view of things uh particular baptist all right that's their growth
in america now also uh as i've mentioned uh contributing to this great growth uh it was
their evangelistic zeal on the frontiers of america and what helped them to plant churches
on the frontiers of america was their tremendous was the tremendous freedom and flexibility of
baptist church polity and one of the things that was responsible for this was the farmer preacher
and one of the church historians mentions this peculiar individual that was not just one man but
was many different people and talks about him and about what was responsible for the tremendous
growth of baptists and how they were able to plant so many churches i quote the proliferation
of baptist churches dependent above all upon their spiritual vitality and their individually
individualistic emphasis on conversion yet they also were remarkably well adapted to the social
structures or lack of them on the frontier baptists did not exceed presbyterians and zeal
but they were unhindered by the bottlenecks to evangelistic work created by strict educational
requirements and a rigid presbyterial polity the genius of baptist evangelism was also at the
opposite pole from the methodist insistence on order and authority its frontier hero was not the
circuit writer of the methodist but the farmer preacher who moved with the people into new areas
unpaid self-supporting a lot of the time and hence financially independent the farmer preacher was
usually a man who had heard the calls of the ministry and had got himself licensed to preach
in due course he would be ordained by a church sometimes one which he had gathered himself from
such churches spraying other candidates for the ministry and by this process the baptist advanced
into the wilderness or moved back in among the unchurched multitudes of the older areas without
direction from bishops or synods and without financial support from denominational agencies
or special societies on many occasions an entire church would move on to a new location
just as lewis craig's congregation moved from virginia to become gilbert's creek church in
kentucky in 1783 baptist work was not as disorganized as all this may imply however
for their regional associations usually state associations fostered a spirit of unity as well
as concern for discipline and doctrinal harmony and so those were some of the reasons for the
tremendous growth of the baptist denomination and particular baptist in the united states all right
now there's just five minutes left do you have any questions before i come to a last point that
i'll just begin to touch on this morning yes bill uh well that's a big question
well yes basically um the westlands got off the ground in the united states in the late 1700s
since they were associated with the anglican church after the revolutionary war they met a
degree of opposition in fact there was a there were a few methodists in the united states before
the revolutionary war but because they were connected with the state church of england
indirectly they lost most of their leadership at the revolutionary war when they all went
back to england and john wesley denounced the american revolution well um then however there
were they under the leader of leadership of francis asbury uh they began to implement the
system of circuit writing preachers and were responsible for planning many many hundreds
and thousands of churches on the frontiers of america through a great deal of evangelistic zeal
because they were armenian uh in their basic uh theology however when liberalism began began
to come in in the late 1800s it didn't even meet a fight in the west in the methodists for the most
part and basically the major methodist groups became very very quickly honeycombed with
liberalism and modernism because of that okay other questions carl
yes i should mention that yes
yes well that's a good idea carl why don't you do that that i was just looking at that graph
if you have the book it'll give you an overview of the entirety of baptist church history since
the reformation and if we made 150 of them maybe on the church machine we could do that
but the book is entitled introduction to the baptist by earl halts i don't know if it's still
in print maybe doug you could find that out i don't think so but if it is we should get
some copies in and because that's a very very helpful overview of baptist church history doug
yes yeah do you have that in stock yes that's that basically treats the uh the uh a lot of
the different avenues of particular baptist history too and how they held to uh the doctrines
of grace other questions now if you know much about baptist churches in the united states
today your great question is going to be well what happened because uh i don't think anyone would
dispute the question or the statement or the assertion that most baptist churches in the
united states today are not particular baptist churches they're not calvinistic in any clear
sense at all how did calvinism or the particular baptist heritage which at one time 150 years ago
basically dominated american baptist churches how did that almost totally disappear from baptist
churches in america by 1950 or 60 until it was a very rare thing to find a convinced
calvinist who would call himself that among baptists well the answer to that question
is not simple in fact it's quite complicated in some ways but various factors can be pointed out
and i'm going to begin to point those out next week as we take up the debasing of the particular
baptist heritage in america and how it came to be at its present very low condition in terms of
what baptists were at one time in the united states so that's where we'll take it up next week
all right you're dismissed