In the past month I had the privilege of participating in the 184th anniversary of Gilgal Baptist Church near Tuscaloosa and the 190th anniversary of Siloam Baptist Church, Marion. Preparing for these events caused me to revisit the early days of Alabama Baptist history and reading that history raised the question about learning from our past lest we repeat the mistakes of our forefathers.
The Alabama Territory opened to settlement after a treaty with the Chickasaw Indians in 1805. The treaty stipulated that territory ceded by the Chickasaws would not be opened for settlement for three years; but like many promises made to Native Americans, it was quickly broken. John Nicholson is noted as the first Baptist preacher in the Alabama territory and by 1808 there were enough Baptists living north of the Tennessee River to organize the first Baptist church on Alabama soil — Flint River Primitive Baptist Church, founded Oct. 2, 1808.
The next year, Enon Baptist Church was founded. This church later became First Baptist Church, Huntsville, and is the oldest Baptist church associated with the Alabama Baptist State Convention in continuous existence in the state.
Baptists grew quickly. By the time Alabama became a state — 1819 — history reports 60 Baptist ministers living and working here. When the Alabama Baptist State Convention was organized in 1823, there were 128 Baptist churches in the state with more than 5,000 members from a total population of 127,000.
The rapid growth of Baptists reflected the vibrant religious life along the nation’s western frontier at the time. The Second Great Awakening was in full force in the 1810s and 1820s. Camp meetings drew hundreds, sometimes thousands, of participants and regularly lasted a week or more. The famous Cane Ridge Camp Meeting in Kentucky reportedly drew more than 20,000 people. In Alabama the Canaan Camp Meeting in Jefferson County saw more than 500 people baptized.
Camp meetings were the social events of the year for hardworking settlers. They were also great revival meetings. Led primarily by Methodist circuit-riding preachers and Baptist farmer-preachers, the gospel was proclaimed day and night as preachers took turns calling people to salvation and to regenerated living. The preaching was emotional, the music lively and the results inspiring.
Studies show rapid growth for Methodist and Baptist churches during these years as people responded to the message that “whosoever will may come.”
Along the seacoast of the United States other momentous events were taking place in Baptist life. On Feb. 19, 1812, Adoniram and Ann Judson sailed from Boston as America’s first Protestant missionaries. As every Baptist should know, their Bible study during the voyage to India convinced them of the Baptist understanding of the Scriptures. Luther Rice, who sailed with the Judsons, decided to return to America to rally support for missions efforts while the Judsons moved to Burma to plant the gospel.
The result was the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions founded in 1814. The body is more commonly known as the Triennial Convention because it met every three years. From the Triennial Convention came the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society along with societies for domestic missions, Bible publishing and distribution, and seminary education.
Baptist work was thriving during the 1820s but that soon came to an end.
By the early 1830s what historians call the “Anti-Missionary Movement” was in full swing. Flint River Baptist later withdrew from convention life in 1838 and became an anti-missionary primitive Baptist church and continues to function. Protests arose over the style of the religious experiences typical of the Second Great Awakening. Frontier religion had too much zeal, too much enthusiasm for the more staid older churches along the Southern Atlantic coast. Objections arose to many of the preachers being self-taught rather than having been discipled by approved ministers. Theology became a major division. The anti-missionary voices objected to the “whosoever will” theology preached by the emerging evangelical wings of major denominations. Instead the more critical voices advocated a more Calvinistic theology that only God determined who would be saved.
With this theology, it is not surprising that strong protests were raised to foreign and domestic missions. Mission societies across the nation disbanded under anti-missionary pressures. Furthermore, critics argued, societies and conventions were contrary to biblical teaching, which emphasized the local church.
Historians point out Baptists and other Protestant Christians in the Northeast and West generally embraced “whosoever will” theology. It was the established churches of the South that held to the more Calvinistic theology. Also Baptists, one of the two denominations that benefited most from the evangelical approach to Christianity, played a key role in bringing the Second Great Awakening to an end, historians say.
In 1837 Alabama Baptists voted to survey the then 21 associations in the state to determine their stands on missions. The report said four associations supported missions, four associations opposed missions and the other 13 were divided on the topic.
Historians write that by the end of the 1840s the Second Great Awakening in the United States had come to a close.
It is interesting that missions-minded Baptists persevered in their commitment to reaching a lost world with the gospel, as they formed the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845 despite the growing oppositions to missions and evangelism of the time.
Following the Civil War another burst of religious activism broke out featuring such evangelists as Charles Finney and Dwight L. Moody. Again the theology was “whosoever will” and featured intense social activism by evangelical Christians. Some historians call this time a Third Great Awakening resulting in the expectation that the 20th century would be the “Christian century.”
The period between the end of World War II and the mid-1970s is called by some as a “Fourth Great Awakening.” It featured the rapid growth of evangelical and charismatic denominations including Southern Baptists. Scholars point to religious conflict as a major reason the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity slowed in the second, third and fourth awakenings.
The issues of 200 years ago sound as current as the last gathering of Baptists. Baptists and other Christians still argue over style of worship, over evangelism and missions, over theology, over the role of the ministry, over Baptists working together through conventions and associations or working through the local church. In these arguments one cannot help but hear the echoes of history.
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