Baptists in the South, rapidly rising to challenge Methodists numerically, helped align Southern religion with the South's black slave culture. The birth of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, formed in order to preserve God's will for the African race, signaled the inevitability of war. Middle Georgia remained outside the front lines of the war, the region's relative intactness allowing for the continuation of church life during the war years. While many white Baptists from Middle Georgia marched off to war - whether to fight or to serve as chaplains or army missionaries - others stayed behind and voiced their thoughts from pulpits, in associational meetings, and in the pages of newspapers and journals. While historians have often portrayed white southern Baptists, with few exceptions, as firmly supportive of the Confederacy, the experience of Middle Georgia Baptists is much more dynamic. Far from being monolithic, Baptists at the local church and associational level responded in a myriad of ways to the Confederacy. Patterns locally and associationally emerged and evolved as the war progressed, while differences between Southern and Primitive Baptists stood out. On a personal level, white Baptists' views of slavery and the Confederacy proved to be varied, numerous, nuanced, and dynamic - to such an extent that some individuals were unable to construct a consistent narrative as the war progressed. For their part, black Baptists struggled to shape their own destinies within a white man's world, strivings that grew more intense as the war progressed and freedom seemed within reach. The end of the war signaled new realities for both white and black Baptists of the South. For whites, old loyalties had been rearranged and the immediate future was bleak. At the same time, black Baptists emerged empowered as never before and set forth on the path of self-determination.

This title covers the life of an extraordinary Baptist. Jimmy Allen served as the last 'moderate' president of the Southern Baptist Convention concluding his second term in 1979, the first year of the emergence of a new 'fundamentalist' leadership of the convention. His life parallels the movement of Baptists in the South from a folk people rooted in a predominantly rural ethos into an urban, increasingly educated, and diverse people. He was an activist of the first order, engaging in state and national social agendas of civil rights, strict separation of church and state, and the application of the gospel in all areas of life. His commitment to social action was often lived out in a highly public way in partnership with President Jimmy Carter and it took him to China, Israel, Iran, and many other regions of the world to promote aggressive mission efforts. He was among the few Americans to visit with the Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iranian hostage crisis. Allen's ministry was often lived amid the stresses of mental illness and dysfunctions in his family as well as a major crisis with the HIV and AIDS viruses that took the life of his daughter-in-law and two grandsons. His is a story of trust in a faithful God amid personal suffering that led to remarkable contributions to America's religious faith.

This book deals with the life and work of an educator who fought the major theological battles of the twentieth century. William Owen Carver (1868-1954) was a denominational stalwart and longtime professor of Missions and Comparative Religion at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more than four decades he educated the denomination's ministers and missionaries. Carver was considered one of the brightest minds in the growing denomination, a distinction evidenced by a seminary building, denominational library, and Baptist school of social work that continue to carry his name. He was a prolific writer, managing editor of the SBC academic journal ""Review & Expositor"", and the first president of the Southern Baptist Historical Society. In addition to these contributions, Carver was a Southern Baptist ahead of his time, gently prodding Southern Baptists to see beyond the narrow confines of theological conservatism and to engage the modern world. In the process, Carver became embroiled in numerous denominational controversies, some of which still resonate in our world today. These stories are the subject of this book. Carver's controversies illustrate how freethinking Baptist leaders interacted with their more conservative constituency as they sought to equip the denomination for existence in a religiously diverse, scientifically oriented society.

Emily Chubbick Judson (1817-1854) is a well-known name, but for more reasons than most know. She was a nationally known writer (her pseudonym was Fanny Forrester) with pieces appearing alongside those by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, and she walked in literary company second to none. She wrote children's books, essays, and stories. Then, in 1845, she met Adoniram Judson and they married in 1846. Their work in Burma made them famous as Baptist missionaries. After his death in 1850, she returned to the States in 1851 and spent the last years of her life writing and publishing her essays and poetry, and helping to produce a biography of her husband. During her fascinating life, she was a prolific letter writer. This is the first volume of her life and works, with volumes 2 through 6 containing all of her letters. As these volumes are presented, readers and scholars in the future will find in this material encouragement for sharing more about the Judson lives, and the wonderful work they accomplished. Their humanity, their faith, and their deep commitment to their call should prove to be instructive and inspirational to each of our lives. Volume 1 consists of footnotes, time lines, and biographies that have all emerged out of the project itself. For example, many of Emily Chubbic Judson's letters are undated. To put them in sequence, the events, places, and people within the letters were identified so they could be understood and interpreted correctly; this resulted in a 'Cast of Characters' and 'Places and Events'. The 'Publication Time' puts Chubbick's writings in chronological order. The footnotes clarify and lend context to the names and faces, as well as the stories and the events within the letters, and the connectiveness between the letters. Volume 2 consists of the early letters Emily Chubbick Judson from the years 1836 through 1845.

In 1881, six months after the establishment of Abilene, Texas, seventeen residents met at the local public school building and chartered First Baptist Church of Abilene. These founders instilled a mission-minded focus in the new institution. While First Baptist was not the only institution that served Abilene, the church's importance cannot be overlooked. For over 125 years, First Baptist Church of Abilene has played a prominent role in the Abilene community. From its inception, First Baptist dedicated itself to meting the needs of Abilene. The missionary spirit led to the creation of numerous programs, other churches, and major institutions in town. Through its commitment to serving God through loving others, First Baptist played an indispensable roll in shaping the history of Abilene, Texas.

This is the first book-length study of this pioneer in American religious history. Nurtured in a Tennessee Baptist home, the grandson of a pioneer Baptist preacher and church starter, William Whitsitt grew up knowing and admiring the principle leaders of Landmarkism (Graves, Pendleton, and Dayton). His Civil War experiences and studies at the University of Virginia, Southern Seminary, Berlin, and Leipzig brought him to broader views and the historical-critical approach to historical and biblical studies, placing him at odds with narrow denominationalism and the popular myth of an unbroken succession of Baptist churches all the way back to the New Testament. The sixth professor elected to the Southern Seminary faculty, he succeeded Broadus to become the school's third president. In his private diary, he recorded his candid opinions of his colleagues, revealing a perspective not previously published on men of iconic proportions in Southern Baptists life - Boyce, Broadus, Manly, Robertson, Sampey, and Carver. Brilliant scholar and loyal Baptist, Whitsitt was a key leader in the original effort to mobilize the white Baptist churches of the South into an effective and centralized denominational organization to support missions and Christian education. His scholarly discoveries in original English Baptist documents offended Baptist sensibilities and the resulting national controversy led to his being hounded from office. At stake in the controversy was academic freedom and the fundamental issue of the struggle of Southern Baptists with the legacy of the enlightenment and modernity - the confrontation between the 'new learning' and the 'old faith'.

Born into slavery in 1853, taught to read by his half-white, half-black mother, and attending school in Washington, D.C., during Reconstruction, Samuel Robert Cassius is a fascinating and instructive example of the first generation of freed slaves in the United States. To Lift Up My Race, a collection of writings by Cassius, gives us the man-evangelist, educator, farmer, entrepreneur, postmaster, politician, and father of twenty-three-in a significant moment in the emergence of black culture and society between Reconstruction and the Great Depression. Chronologically and thematically organized, this book contains nearly all of the extant-and all of the crucial-writings of Cassius. Consequently, we see firsthand an ex-slave from Virginia who joins the Stone-Campbell movement (Churches of Christ) in 1883 and emerges as the most influential African American leader and evangelist in that movement. He traveled throughout the United States and Canada, "planting" congregations and propagating what he called the "pure Gospel of Jesus Christ." Cassius was also a remarkably successful fundraiser, often using humor in the articles he wrote for several publications, including the Christian Leader. In addition, Cassius was the author of such pamphlets as Negro Evangelization and the Tohee Industrial School (one of the "workingmen's schools" he helped to found) and The Letter and the Spirit of the Race Problem. In 1920, he published his most important literary work, The Third Birth of a Nation, a response to D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation. The volume offers readers the vision and the voice of a black preacher and writer who endeavored to correct the racism of white America while simultaneously altering the religious beliefs and values of black America, often clashing with and sometimes alienating both. Edward J. Robinson is assistant professor of history and biblical studies at Abilene Christian University. He is the editor of A Godsend to His People: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Marshall Keeble and author of To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius.

This title looks at the fight to defend and extend religious liberty by keeping church and state separate. For nearly two decades, Brent Walker has fought to defend and extend religious liberty for all and uphold the wall of separation between church and state in our nation's capital. First as the Baptist Joint Committee's legal counsel and as executive director since 1999, Walker articulates a cogent Baptist understanding of the importance of the First Amendment's religion clauses in protecting our God-given religious liberty. This collection of essays, speeches, sermons, and congressional testimony provides a living history of the modern era the life of the Baptist Joint Committee, now in its eighth decade. It includes historical essays dealing with the role of the pulpit in the fight for American independence, the involvement of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in fashioning the First Amendment, and the contribution of numerous Baptists like Roger Williams and John Clarke to our understanding of the proper relationship between church and state. It also addresses specific religious liberty issues such as school vouchers, charitable choice, the Ten Commandments, religion in the public schools, attempts to amend the Constitution, including testimony he has given before House and Senate committees on these and other issues. Both a lawyer and an ordained minister, Walker writes on church-state cases decided by the Supreme Court and about the justices themselves as well the theological underpinning of his passion for religious liberty. Sermons he has preached in Baptist pulpits across the land are also included.

Jesus Sound Explosion recalls Mark Curtis Anderson's quest for worldliness-through-rock as he came of age as a Baptist preacher's kid in the 1970s. All of the backsliding and revival, idealism and disillusionment one would expect is here, told with delightfully understated humor and set against the sounds of Led Zeppelin, Yes, and Bruce Springsteen. Here is a knowing look back on a time when Jesus Christ Superstar climbed the pop charts, ""The Cross and the Switchblade"" hit the big screen, and anxious parents played their kids' records backward in search of hidden messages from Satan.

The founder of Rhode Island and of the first Baptist Church in America, an original and passionate advocate for religious freedom, a rare New England colonist who befriended Native Americans and took seriously their culture and their legal rights, Roger Williams is the forgotten giant among the first English colonists. Now, Edwin S. Gaustad, a leading expert on the life of Roger Williams, offers a vividly written and authoritative biography of the most far-seeing of the early settlers-the first such biography written for a general audience. Readers follow Roger and Mary Williams on their 1631 journey to Boston, where he soon became embroiled in many controversies, most notably, his claim that the colonists had unjustly taken Native American lands and his argument that civil authorities could not enforce religious duties. Soon banished for these troubling (if farsighted) views, Williams wandered for fourteen weeks in bitter snow until he bought land from the Narragansett Indians and founded Providence, which soon became a sanctuary for religious freedom and a refuge for dissenters of all stripes. The book discusses Williams' journey back to London, where he sought legal recognition of his colony, spread his enlightened views on Native Americans, and (alongside John Milton) fought passionately for religious freedom. Gaustad also describes how the royal charter of Rhode Island, obtained by Williams in 1663, would become the blueprint of religious freedom for many other colonies and a foundation stone for the First Amendment. Here then is a vibrant portrait of a great American who is truly worthy of remembrance.

Shurden on Baptists: Assessments, Appreciations, Apologies contains articles, essays, and speeches given by Walter Shurden on Baptists. Walter Shurden is a longtime champion of the role of freedom in the Baptist tradition. Recognizing that freedom alone does not tell the whole story, Shurden also speaks to and from other cardinal Baptist convictions. Some of the materials in this volume appear for the first time and consist of speeches and addresses that Shurden has made at crucial points in recent Baptist life in America in the latter part of the twentieth century. Especially concerned with the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and the resulting lack of emphasis on historic Baptist principles, Shurden addresses directly and indirectly the SBC controversy in several of the chapters of this book. More, Shurden emphasizes what makes Baptists distinctive in American religious life.

Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Megiddo Mission is an apocalyptic religious movement that continues to claim a small but dedicated following. Waiting for Elijah is the first book-length study of this unusual sect, which commands attention both for its powers of survival and for its unique blend of faith and practice. Over the course of the church's history, its adherents have combined patriotism, redefinition of gender roles, perfectionism, and communitarianism with elements of middle-class capitalism.
The church originated in the itinerant ministry of a Civil War veteran named L. T. Nichols, whose controversial preaching led to his being shot and wounded. Originally known as the Christian Brethren, Nichols and his followers relocated from Oregon to the Midwest in 1883 and some years later embarked on an evangelistic ministry that entailed traveling up and down the Mississippi River system on a large steamboat. In 1904, the group moved to its present home of Rochester, New York, from which its missionaries traveled throughout the United States and Canada. They took the name "Megiddo" from a strategically located city in ancient Israel, which to them signified a place where soldiers of God gathered to renew their strength and courage.
Drawing on diverse sources--including the writings of Nichols and his charismatic successor, Maud Hembree; newspaper accounts; and interviews with present-day Megiddos--Gari-Anne Patzwald traces the group's intriguing history and analyzes its core beliefs. As she shows, the sect's roots can be found in the Restorationist movement of the early nineteenth century, which sought to recapture biblical truth and practice. A focal point of Nichols's preaching was the assertion that the Hebrew prophet Elijah would return in bodily form prior to the second coming of Christ and the final culmination of history.
Certain Megiddo practices--such as conservative dress and celebration of Christmas in springtime--have, to some in the American mainstream, marked them as outsiders. And indeed, as Patzwald notes, the group displays many characteristics of an enclosed communal society. Yet the Megiddos have always rejected a community of goods in favor of individual initiative and entrepreneurship, and these attributes, Patzwald argues, have done much to ensure the group's survival well beyond its original generation of followers.
The Author: An independent scholar, Gari-Anne Patzwald holds master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Lexington Theological Seminary. She is the associate editor of the Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement.

"This meticulously researched study reveals how the localism inherent among Baptists carries over into political attitudes and involvement. Grammich's 'bible-based' Baptist sectarians also show how diverse Baptists really are and how strong and enduring a social ethic many smaller Baptist groups have cultivated."--Charles H. Lippy, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
This provocative book explores the political views and actions of religious adherents who claim to base their faith on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Focusing on several small Baptist sects scattered throughout the middle and uplands South, Clifford Grammich finds that these groups are often highly engaged politically at the local level. He thus challenges the traditional view of these Baptists as politically aloof, concerned only with matters of faith and personal conduct.
Grammich shows that the politics arising from these groups' religious beliefs are not those of any consistent, pervasive ideology. Rather, he argues, such politics more often reflect a series of adaptations to local circumstances. Among the sects that he studies, there is a strong emphasis on the local authority to interpet the Bible and, thus, to shape religious commands to very specific conditions. Beyond the broad concerns of preserving the traditional family and curbing excessive worldliness, these Baptists are free to adapt their theology to meet their particular needs--and can often do so more readily than those belonging to more hierarchical churches. Since these people are typically more rural, more southern, less educated, and less affluent than most Americans, the author notes, they can face special problems in dealing with modernity--problems that their religion helps them address.
The book includes two case studies that show in depth both the possiblities and limitations of politics within these groups. In a local labor struggle in Tennessee, Baptist sectarians were able to generate more religious support for a United Mine Workers local than was offered by the usual supporters of organized labor in other churches. On the other hand, in an environmental conflict in Kentucky, these Baptists' traditional community concerns inhibited their participation in a broader reform movement.
Relating the beliefs and actions of the "local Baptists" to various larger themes--including those of cultural traditionalism, economic populism, and increasing affluence--Grammich offers a valuable study of the complex ways in which religious faith can affect political involvement. His book will effect a new understanding of American fundamentalism itself.
The Author: Clifford A. Grammich Jr. is director of research at Heartland Center, a social research institute in Hammond, Indiana.

Examines the conflict between modern-day Southern Baptists and "liberal" Southern Baptists over control of the Southern Baptist Convention David Morgan captures the essence of the conflict between some modern-day Southern Baptists, who saw themselves as crusaders for truth, as they sought to redeem a new holy land--the Southern Baptist Convention-- from the control of other Southern Baptists they viewed as "liberals." To the so-called liberals, the crusaders were "fundamentalists" on a mission, not to reclaim the SBC in the name of theological truth but to gain control and redirect its activities according to their narrow political, social, and theological perspectives. The New Crusades provides a comprehensive history of the conflict, taking the reader through the bitter and divisive struggles of the late 1980s, that culminated in the 1991 emergence of a moderate faction within the SBC. The fundamentalists had won.

Baptists in Early North America-Meherrin, Virginia features the transcription of the records of Meherrin, an eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Baptist church on the frontier of Virginia in rural Lunenburg County. Despite its backwater location and relatively small congregation, Meherrin played a significant role in one of the great episodes of Baptist history in young America: the rise of Separate Baptists and their influence in Virginia. Numerous important Separate Baptists including Samuel Harris, Jeremiah Walker, Elijah Baker, John Weatherford (all imprisoned for their faith), and John Williams (scribe of the Separates) figured in the Meherrin story. Meherrin was a microcosm of Virginia Baptist life including evangelism, theological divisions, church discipline, the struggle for religious liberty in the time of a state church, and the role of enslaved Africans. Meherrin was a mother church for several churches in Southside Virginia and a colony from Meherrin even migrated into North Carolina where another church, also named Meherrin, was established. The original record book (1771-1844) is among the treasures in the library of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. In addition, the volume includes an essay on Meherrin's place within the larger Virginia Baptist story by editor Fred Anderson, who served as executive director of the VBHS for thirty-eight years. Meherrin became extinct in 1844 when it divided, then dissolved, in the midst of the Campbellism controversy.

This volume of essays focuses on the thought of John Gill, the doyen of High Calvinism in the transatlantic Baptist community of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Among the topics covered are Gill's trinitarian theology, his soteriological views, his Baptist ecclesiology, and his use of Scripture. Other papers are more focused, examining, for instance, his clash with the Arminian Methodist leader John Wesley over the issues of predestination and election, a clash that decisively shaped Wesley's perspective on Calvinism.
The tercentennial of Gill's birth in 1997 is a fitting occasion to issue this study of a man whose systematic theology and exposition of the Old and New Testaments formed the mainstay of many eighteenth-century Baptist ministers' libraries and who has never been the subject of a major critical study.

This intellectual and social history is the first comprehensive biography of Pilgram Marpeck (c. 1495-1556), a radical reformer and lay leader of Anabaptist groups in Switzerland, Austria, and South Germany. Marpeck's influential life and work provide a glimpse of the theologies and practices of the Roman Church and of various reform movements in sixteenth-century Europe.
Drawing on extensive archival data documenting Marpeck's professional life, as well as on his numerous published and unpublished writings on theology and religious reform, Stephen B. Boyd traces Marpeck's unconventional transition from mining magistrate to Anabaptist leader, establishes his connections with various radical social and religious groups, and articulates aspects of his social theology. Marpeck's distinctive and eclectic theology, Boyd demonstrates, focused on the need for personal, uncoerced conversion, rejected state interference in the affairs of the church, denied the need for a monastic withdrawal from the secular world, and called for the Christian's active pursuit of justice before God and among human beings.

In his chapter on Acadia, Barry Moody argues that the university has been surprisingly open to a variety of theologies and pedagogical perspectives, tracing this to the liberality and breadth of vision of Nova Scotia Baptists. His study helps explain the remarkable strength of the Baptist tradition in late nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. J.R.C. Perkin's chapter on one of Acadia's distinguished presidents, Watson Kirkonnell, shows Kirkonnell as representative of this tradition and its strength. G.A. Rawlyk examines some of the underlying forces which significantly affected the development of McMaster University. He suggests that the cutting edge of McMaster's nineteenth century Evangelicalism may have been dulled by the enthusiastic manner in which "consumerism" and "modernity" were appropriated by the Baptist Convention leadership which controlled the university. In his discussion of Brandon College, Walter Ellis argues that Brandon failed as a Baptist institution of higher learning largely because it was out of touch with Western Canadian realities. If it had been a bible college rather than a Manitoba variant of McMaster, Brandon might still be in existence and Conventional Baptists might as a result be a far stronger force in the West. These essays on individual institutions highlight the pressure on denominational universities to emphasize not only Christian spirituality but secular scholarship. They will be of interest to all those who are concerned not only with the fate of Baptist institutions but the entire Christian church in Canada.

In his chapter on Acadia, Barry Moody argues that the university has been surprisingly open to a variety of theologies and pedagogical perspectives, tracing this to the liberality and breadth of vision of Nova Scotia Baptists. His study helps explain the remarkable strength of the Baptist tradition in late nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. J.R.C. Perkin's chapter on one of Acadia's distinguished presidents, Watson Kirkonnell, shows Kirkonnell as representative of this tradition and its strength. G.A. Rawlyk examines some of the underlying forces which significantly affected the development of McMaster University. He suggests that the cutting edge of McMaster's nineteenth century Evangelicalism may have been dulled by the enthusiastic manner in which "consumerism" and "modernity" were appropriated by the Baptist Convention leadership which controlled the university. In his discussion of Brandon College, Walter Ellis argues that Brandon failed as a Baptist institution of higher learning largely because it was out of touch with Western Canadian realities. If it had been a bible college rather than a Manitoba variant of McMaster, Brandon might still be in existence and Conventional Baptists might as a result be a far stronger force in the West. These essays on individual institutions highlight the pressure on denominational universities to emphasize not only Christian spirituality but secular scholarship. They will be of interest to all those who are concerned not only with the fate of Baptist institutions but the entire Christian church in Canada.

"The publication of this volume is cause for celebration! The years of painstaking research in untold towns, cities, and libraries in Europe, as well as in North America, the empathy the author brought to the subject... the skill evident in translating, especially technical terms, and the firm grasp of both minute details and their implications, as well as the overall story, have raised the level of historical scholarship to a new high." -- Cornelius J. Dyck, Church History

The oldest and largest communal society in North America, the Hutterites -- Anabaptists of German origin, like the Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren -- have long been the subject of scholarly study and popular curiosity. Werner Packull tells the comprehensive story of the Hutterite beginnings in their original homelands -- particularly in Tyrol and Moravia -- and discovers important relationships among early Anabaptist sects.

"Extensive quotations from the Hutterite Chronicle, the prison letters, and other witness accounts give immediacy to Packull's narrative and provide English readers with a window on primary sources that remain largely untranslated... With its wealth of evocative source material, it is a highly readable account that will appeal not only to specialists but also to undergraduates and general readers." -- Erika Rummel, American Historical Review

"Packull is to be lauded for doing the research so thoroughly and presenting the results so lucidly. His is a meticulous and masterful piece of scholarship in a neglected area of ecclesiastical history." -- Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

"An indispensable tool and resources for all who describe and interpret these traditions from religiousand social perspectives." -- Walter Klaassen, Conrad Grebel Review

"This remarkable history of early Swiss and Upper German Anabaptism sets a new norm for scholarship, combining as it does for the first time in such depth the methodologies of social history and the history of ideas. Werner O. Packull seems to have left no stone unturned." -- Leonard Gross, Mennonite Quarterly Review