CHARLESTON, S.C. (ABP)—Perhaps the most notable thing about the recent “Baptist History Celebration,” held in the mother church of Southern Baptists, is that it happened at all.
But historians from an astonishing array of Baptist groups—liberal, conservative, fundamentalist, moderate, African-American, Caucasian, Latino, Northern, Southern, Calvinist and Arminian—gathered at First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C., to celebrate and learn more about the diversity they say has characterized the Baptist movement in the United States.
The meeting began with an admiring profile of English Baptist pastor John Gill—a hero to neo-Calvinist Baptists—from a conservative Canadian Baptist who is slated to begin teaching this fall at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Shortly after, attendees heard from an American Baptist currently teaching at a Canadian Baptist seminary but who has also served on the Baylor University faculty. William Brackney noted that Baptists, from their roots in 17th-century English separatism, always have encompassed diverse theological views on Calvinism and other doctrines.
“We come from a very diverse background. It should surprise no one that we are a very diverse tradition today,” said Brackney, who teaches at Acadia Divinity College and is considered one of the world's most authoritative Baptist historians.
The early Baptist movement in the United States was centered in the Northeast, and particularly New England, where Calvinistic Puritans governed all aspects of life, both civil and religious. Since the earliest U.S. Baptists had few confessional statements and differed from congregation to congregation on issues as fundamental as the nature of God's sovereignty, Brackney said, “Imagine what this array of theology looked like to the Puritan colonists.”
As the early Baptists in the urban centers of the Northeast began to prosper and build larger churches, Brackney continued, many of them became increasingly concerned with “looking like good theological citizens” to their Puritan rulers. So they developed a form of Calvinism and stoic forms of worship.
These urban Baptists also began to codify theological confessions as well as establish more organized denominational bodies. The conference marked the 300th anniversary of Philadelphia Baptist Association, the first Baptist association in the New World.
The forms of Baptist theology dominant in the urban centers of the Northeast also exerted influence in Charleston, with the first church founded by colonists who had moved from Kittery, Maine. Charleston Baptist Association would later become the first such association in the South.
Likewise, a “Charleston tradition” in worship styles among Southern Baptists developed out of the host church, with an emphasis on education, structure and order that would make many Presbyterians feel at home. Meanwhile, simultaneously, the “Sandy Creek tradition” began developing out of the Sandy Creek Baptist Church near Asheboro, N.C. That style emphasized emotional worship experiences and the unpredictable movement of the Holy Spirit.
The conference's host church played an important role in another distinguishing mark among Baptists—their split into Northern and Southern camps over the issue of slavery. From the chancel where longtime Pastor Richard Furman once cited Scripture to justify the continuation of slavery, and in a sanctuary ringed by a gallery where black members once were required to sit, historians recounted the contributions of African-American Baptists.
“For many years … historians paid little attention to these great souls who labored hard and faithfully for the Lord,” said LeRoy Fitts, one of the nation's most prominent African-American Baptist historians, in a profile of Lott Carey. Carey is widely regarded as the first black Baptist missionary. His evangelistic work continues to bear fruit in Liberia, Ghana and other West African nations.
“Records indicate that Lott Carey may rightfully be called the father of West African missions,” Fitts said. Carey was born into slavery in Virginia in 1780. In 1807, he became a Christian after hearing a sermon from the slave gallery of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Va. Fitts said a white deacon at the church taught Carey the Bible in a night school for slaves.
By 1815, Carey had earned enough money to purchase his own freedom and that of his children. In 1821, he went to Sierra Leone and then to Liberia. Although his life was cut short by an 1828 explosion, the largest African-American Baptist missionary-sending group still bears his name.