The Americanization of the Baptist Tradition

In his influential book, The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch argues that “American Protestantism has been skewed away from central ecclesiastical institutions and high culture” and “pushed and pulled into its present shape by a democratic and populist orientation.”[1] Government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” created demand for religious expressions that mirrored America’s democratic ideals. Since the Revolution, the collective American imagination has featured suspicion of traditional institutional authorities, permeating American culture with an enduring populist instinct.

As a pastor, I have long been interested in studying the impact of culture on the church. Of course, proving “influence” historically is often a fool’s errand. As the late Gordon Wood warned, “Intellectual activity in a culture is not a one-way flow between great minds and passive recipients; it is a discourse, a complex marketplace-like conglomeration of intellectual exchanges involving many participants all trying to manipulate the ideas available to them in order to explain, justify, lay blame for, or otherwise make sense of what is happening around them.”[2] We err when we oversimplify this complex matrix in search of a compelling narrative to tell.

Nevertheless, the historian concerns himself with documenting change-over-time, and I believe the American Baptist tradition underwent drastic transformation as the new nation emerged. As we get ready to celebrate America’s 250^th birthday this week, let’s explore two episodes from the early American Baptist story. Both illustrate a theological tradition inherited from the Old World undergoing change in its new American context. I’ll let the reader determine whether these changes were for the best.

David Thomas and the Great Revival

David Thomas (1732–1812) was a well-respected Regular Baptist preacher in Virginia during the pre-Revolutionary Anglican establishment years. Awarded a Master of Arts degree by Rhode Island College (Brown University) in 1755, his classical education distinguished him from his uneducated Baptist peers. In his mid-60s, after a long and fruitful ministry in Virginia, he followed the mass of Baptist preachers from Virginia to Kentucky. His arrival coincided with the Great Revival at the turn of the century, and Thomas, after reviewing Presbyterian Adam Rankin’s dismissing criticism of the revivals, decided to take up his pen to defend the events as genuine works of God.^[3]

Interestingly, Thomas’s tract was not his first work of public apology. In 1774, while living in Virginia, he had initially entered the public fray with another tract, The Virginian Baptist, to defend his Baptist peers from the false accusations and prejudices of the Anglican establishment. He argued then that if readers would “impartially” examine Baptist principles and practice by the “word of God,” their fears would be laid to rest, and they would find nothing but the “pure gospel of Jesus Christ.”^[4] These two tracts, written nearly twenty-five years apart, illustrate the rapid cultural changes that impacted the Baptist movement during those tumultuous years.

In 1774, Thomas employed an apologetic strategy of looking to the past to connect the Baptist movement of which he was a representative with historical orthodoxy and the worldwide Baptist movement. In the preface he alluded to the Second London Confession of Faith and wrote, “This confession we have adopted as our own.”^[5] The bulk of the remainder of the work relied heavily on language from the confession to formulate for contemporaries Thomas’s own summary of Baptist doctrine. In 1774, the pathway to cultural legitimacy came through connection with historical orthodoxy and tradition. By 1803, however, connection to the past no longer guaranteed cultural acceptance.

In defending the “reformation” then underway in the Kentucky revivals, Thomas encouraged his readers to search the Scriptures, not with the assistance of any confessional tradition, but as individuals: “And when we have done all we can to obtain information let us, being each one fully persuaded in his own mind, go on his own way . . . and let every one allow his neighbor the same freedom to judge and act for himself.”^[6] By the time of the Great Revival, Thomas appealed to the public on the basis of individual experience, not connection to tradition. Though no evidence suggests he ever abandoned his commitment to Baptist confessionalism, that commitment no longer served his apologetic purposes. By 1803, he sought to convince a population less interested in looking backwards that the revivals were “a preliminary essay toward” the millennium to come.^[7]

For many, the Great Revival vindicated America’s new age of liberty and anticipated the coming of Christ’s millennial kingdom. Eyewitnesses often described the events in millennial and revolutionary terms that mirrored what was happening politically. Richard McNemar, a Presbyterian minister who later joined the Shakers, celebrated how revival preachers eschewed Calvinist creeds in favor of proclaiming a Savior who died for all. In the revivals, “everything appeared new,” and those who opposed the movement on creedal grounds were, in language echoing the Republican critique of Federalism, merely seeking to uphold the “old order.”^[8] Most eyewitness accounts allude to a spirit of unity that replaced a party spirit and freed ministers from diverse denominational backgrounds to overlook doctrinal differences in favor of preaching the gospel to win converts. Presbyterian David Purviance referred to the work as a “reformation” and excitedly joined with others in renouncing “man-made creeds.”^[9]

American evangelicals, Baptists included, had come to expect revival since the days of Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent, and George Whitefield, but this one seemed even more momentous. Methodist John B. McFerrin noted one key difference: whereas the former revivals were often instigated by one gifted revival preacher at planned revival meetings, Kentucky’s revivals arose spontaneously through several preachers relying on “the ordinary means of grace.”^[10] In other words, God was working through common men instead of elites. Revival preaching, in contrast to the stuffy creeds of Calvinism, seemed better able to reconcile Christian doctrine to “the present order of things.”^[11]

According to Tennessee Methodist W. L. Grissom, this period witnessed a war between “formalism and spiritual Christianity; between creed and a religious experience; between a religious faith and skepticism.”^[12] As reports of revival fires returned from distant northern cities, it seemed that Christ’s kingdom was at hand and “that the various revolutions of the present age may be rendered to that great event.”^[13] At the dawn of the century, it looked as if the old order was being upended and replaced by something new. Revival participants experienced religious revolution in a social context that mirrored what was happening politically. If the rhetoric against formalism, creeds, and the old order sounds familiar, it is because Republicans were making similar arguments against New England Federalists.

The Philadelphia Confession

David Thomas was not alone in repackaging the Baptist faith to appeal to more democratic sensibilities. The use of the Philadelphia Confession of Faith had long been a source of contention among Baptists in Virginia, Kentucky, and the western frontier. Separate Baptists feared that subscription to a creed would interfere with submission to the Bible as sole authority, while Regular Baptists followed the Philadelphia creedal tradition inherited from English Particular Baptists which had added statements on hymn singing and the laying on of hands to the Second London Confession in 1742.

In 1787, six Virginia Baptist associations, celebrating the recent passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and experiencing a revival in their churches, overcame Separate and Regular distinctions and formed the General Committee, declaring that “from hence forth, we shall be known by the name of the United Baptist Churches of Christ in Virginia.” Separate Baptists were historically Calvinistic, though their church covenants generally lacked the doctrinal precision of formal creeds. After much debate, the union formally adopted the Philadelphia Confession, though the following concession was made: “To prevent the confession of faith from usurping a tyrannical power over the conscience of any, we do not mean, that every person is bound to the strict observance of everything therein contained.”^[14] Thus, Virginia’s Baptists based their union on substantive, not strict, subscription to the confession.

Baptists in Kentucky, who maintained tight bonds with their Virginia brethren through these years, had a much harder time uniting. Though the Separate Baptist South Kentucky Association united with the United Baptists of Virginia, formal unity with the Regular Baptist Elkhorn Association was more difficult to procure. They attempted to form such a union three separate times before the Great Revival, and each time those attempts proved futile due to the Regular Baptist insistence on “strict adherence” to the Philadelphia Confession of Faith and the Separate Baptist suspicion of tyranny in response to the Regular’s reliance on any creed other than the Bible.^[15]

By 1801, however, with their churches exploding in growth and millennial hopes prevailing in light of the new “spirit of free inquiry” and the end of the “old order,” such insistence no longer seemed appropriate. The old focus on historical creeds and precise doctrinal systems seemed out of touch with the triumphant revivalistic spirit, and Kentucky Baptists finally achieved formal union based on eleven agreed-upon terms that made no allusion to the Philadelphia Confession. The terms of union affirmed shared convictions such as the authority of Scripture and the Trinity. It also affirmed several uncontroversial tenets of soteriological Calvinism such as total depravity and perseverance of the saints. However, it omitted the hot button issue of unconditional election and specified regarding Christ’s atonement that “preaching Christ tasted death for every man shall be no bar to communion.”^[16]

Generally, these Baptists remained committed to the basic tenets of Calvinism, but during these years a new form of “populist Calvinism” began to emerge on the western frontier that was more palatable to democratizing sensibilities.^[17] Complex doctrinal formulations reeked of northern elitism. Revival preachers rejoiced that multitudes were coming to Christ without reliance on creeds and precise doctrinal distinctions. On April 30, 1805, the Elkhorn Association began advertising its new revised edition of the Philadelphia Confession of Faith in the Kentucky Gazette for “only 12 ½ cents for a single one or one dollar per dozen.” Unfortunately, no known surviving copy of this revision exists.

However, the United Baptists of Virginia published their own revision in 1806, and that version reveals the kind of doctrinal changes Baptists had in mind during this era. The changes proposed to the confession show the influence of American ideals, for the most drastic amendment came in Chapter 25, “On Civil Government.” Here, the revisionists replaced language specifying Scripture’s teaching that government was ordained by God to encourage well-doing and punish evil with explicit republican language. The new statement specified, “All civil Government flows from, and originates with the people, who institute and ordain the same, but for as much as every individual member of any body corporate or politic, is possessed of natural unalienable rights, liberties, and privileges; so no constituted powers or authorities, can divest them of those rights.”^[18]

The English Baptists who had written the original over a century before derived their emphasis on God’s ordination of human government from Romans 13:1–4. The United Baptists did not deny God a role in their ideal democratic government, but their language replaced explicit reference to God with rhetoric emphasizing the concerns of American citizens. By 1806, American republicanism had successfully made its way into the Baptist confession of faith.

Besides specifying that “all civil Government flows from, and originates with the people,” the most notable changes involved softening the confession’s Calvinism.^[19] The Virginia revision certainly remained Calvinistic, but the revisionists removed certain controversial formulations. For example, the chapter on God’s decree was reduced from seven points of doctrine in the original to one single statement in the revision. Likewise, in chapter ten on effectual calling, the revisionists deleted the original confession’s description of the fates of “elect infants” and the non-elect. Baptist theology was undergoing a process of Americanization that was making it more palatable to populist sensibilities. Rigid doctrinal formulations inherited from the past were being replaced by statements with broader appeal to the democratic masses.

Conclusion

Immediately after these changes, Baptists in the South fought contentious battles over salaried clergy, formal education, and mission societies—debates energized by populist suspicion of elites. By the early twentieth century, coinciding with the popularity of American pragmaticism, American Baptists would also largely abandon the monthly practice of disciplining wayward church members.[20] And, of course, closer to our own time, we are still analyzing the impact of the church’s politicization in a new digital age. Whatever one concludes about these changes, one thing is clear—culture matters for the church. If you want to understand theological and ecclesial changes, you need to closely examine what’s happening in the world.

[1] Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 5.

[2] Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (New York: Penguin, 2008), 20.

[3] David Thomas, The Observer Trying the Great Reformation in This State, and Proving It to Have Been Originally a Work of Divine Power (Lexington, KY: John Bradford, 1802). Thomas was responding to Adam Rankin, A Review of the Noted Revival in Kentucky, Commenced in the Year of Our Lord, 1801 (Lexington, KY: John Bradford, 1801).

[4] David Thomas, The Virginian Baptist; Or A View and Defence of the Christian Religion as It Is Professed by the Baptists of Virginia (Baltimore: Enoch Story, 1774), 3.

[5] Thomas, The Virginian Baptist, 7.

[6] Thomas, The Observer Trying the Great Reformation in This State, 20.

[7] Thomas, The Observer Trying the Great Reformation in This State, 31.

[8] Robert Evans, ed., The Kentucky Revival: Selected Core Documents (Hazelbrook, Australia: Research in Evangelical Revivals, 2018), 143–44.

[9] Evans, The Kentucky Revival, 154.

[10] Evans, The Kentucky Revival, 177.

[11] Methodist James B. Finley used this phrase in Evans, The Kentucky Revival, 208.

[12] Evans, The Kentucky Revival, 280.

[13] This hope was expressed in a letter from Presbyterian minister, Moses Hoge, in North Carolina, to Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, in Evans, The Kentucky Revival, 328.

[14] Robert B. Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond, VA: John O’ Lynch, 1810), 75.

[15] For the best treatment of these attempts at union, see Keith Harper, “‘And All the Baptists in Kentucky Took the Name United Baptists,’: The Union of the Separate and Regular Baptists of Kentucky,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 110, no. 1 (2012): 3–31.

[16] J. H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists, from 1769 to 1885, vol. 1 (Cincinnati, OH: J. R. Baumes, 1885), 546.

[17] This label is borrowed from E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 286–90.

[18] United Baptists of Virginia, The Baptist Declaration of Faith, Revised and Adapted (Alexandria, VA: Cottom and Stewart, 1806), 30.

[19] United Baptists of Virginia, The Baptist Declaration of Faith, Revised and Adapted (Alexandria, VA: Cottom and Stewart, 1806), 30.

[20] Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 116.