The early Baptists who trickled to the American colonies in the seventeenth century were less disposed to creating distinctive doctrines than simply seeking an opportunity to be "faithful and obedient," which they believed was impossible in any of the established churches. Most Baptists were Calvinist in theology. However, they were more specifically recognized for certain practices: baptism of adults only and then only by immersion; worship inspired by the Holy Spirit and not directed by a set liturgy or prayer book; ministry by "gifts" rather than by hierarchy, with little distinction between clergy and laity; opposition to the use of oaths in court or elsewhere; and, most radically, a belief that no Christian in good conscience could execute the office of civil magistrate.

Over time Baptists articulated their beliefs in the language of freedom: Scriptural freedom asserted that every Christian was free and obligated to study and obey the scripture. Soul freedom affirmed that each believer should deal with God without imposition of creed, direction of clergy, or interference by civil government. Church freedom maintained that local churches were to be free under the Lordship of Christ and should identify their membership, order their work, empower their leadership, or participate (or not) with the larger body of Christ as they determined locally. Religious freedom asserted that the necessity of freedom of religion, freedom for religion, and freedom from religion was absolute. These beliefs made the sacrifice and burden of being Baptist large; consequently, the number of members of the denomination was small in its early days. But in the eighteenth century the Baptists were reinvigorated by their adoption of the "warm" theology of the Great Awakening and by their advocacy of a theology of freedom that fit well with the political inclinations of the Revolutionary era.

From 1820 to 1870 Baptists in America were thus a dynamic force gathering momentum. By 1820 Baptists had left behind their identity as a tiny minority of isolated, independent-minded people who mostly derived from the Puritan traditions of New England. Their new growth was most notable in the old West and the South. In New England and the Middle Atlantic their preachers and leaders were still often among the educated elite. Their published sermons focused on explaining biblical texts, inspiring their congregations, and providing guidance for moral development. In areas of new growth Baptists communicated more frequently in person than in print.

Baptist literary contributions beyond sermons included participating in biblical and theological controversies, shaping ecclesiastical matters (particularly in support of overseas "missions"), and challenging leaders of government and community to maintain strict distance from the internal affairs of religious groups. The latter focus was first expressed around the broad themes of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, especially regarding taxation for support of established religious groups. It was then conceptualized as the doctrine of separation of church and state, which was expressed during the Revolutionary era in the writings of Isaac Backus (1724–1806) in Massachusetts and John Leland (1754–1841) in Virginia. Led by Backus and Leland, Baptists in many locations bartered support for the Revolutionary cause in return for consideration of religious liberty. The ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 and the Bill of Rights in 1791 achieved this most distinctive of Baptist goals. By 1833 it was a doctrine established in every state as well.

By 1820 Baptist literary focus reflected four developments: the adoption of overseas missions as a unifying and energizing force; the success of evangelism and home missions, especially among the marginally educated people of the frontiers and immigrants from Europe; the rapid growth of the Baptist movement into the expanding populations of the new territories; and the growing theological and regional tensions rising among Baptists.

BAPTIST EDUCATION AND PUBLICATION

During this period Baptists developed strong Sabbath school programs to reach and educate children and founded a number of weekday schools, academies, and colleges. Although an attempt to establish a "national college," Columbian College in Washington, D.C. (1821), ultimately failed by mid-century, the founding of Baptist colleges was unusually frequent in this period. Notable examples in the North included such institutions as the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, later renamed Colgate University (New York, 1819); Franklin College (Indiana, 1834); the University at Lewisburg, later renamed Bucknell University (Pennsylvania, 1846); and the University of Chicago (1857, reorganized 1891). In the South, Georgetown College (Kentucky, 1829), Wake Forest College (North Carolina, 1834), Richmond College (Virginia, 1840), Mercer University (Georgia, 1837), Howard College (Alabama, 1841), and Baylor College (1856, Baylor University in 1886) were all established. Originally intended to train ministers, these institutions quickly had a much broader impact among the general population. In 1859 the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was established at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, but following the Civil War was moved in 1877 to Louisville, Kentucky.

Baptists also effectively established publication societies, primarily to support the curriculum needs of their educational programs and to print tracts in support of their efforts in evangelism and missions. First organized in 1824 as the Baptist General Tract Society and then later as the American Baptist Publication and Sunday School Society, the Baptist publishing organization was incorporated in 1845 as the American Baptist Publication Society. By 1865 it had established the National Baptist, a periodical, and pioneered in publishing multilingual resources for use among immigrant peoples.

To achieve distribution of their materials the Publication Society developed a "colportage program" by which printed materials were transported by colporteurs, a French term meaning "bearers" that was commonly associated with peddlers and purveyors of religious literature. These adventurous agents carried the materials on foot and by horse-drawn wagons and rail. Later this program expanded to include "chapel cars," which were railroad cars outfitted as small churches that included living quarters for missionaries who also delivered printed material to newly developing towns and hamlets near the rail lines. Between 1824 and 1886 the society reported circulating 330,087,724 copies of religious publications.

Baptists, especially Baptist scholars, published widely during this period, but few were broadly received beyond denominational circles. One clear exception was Francis Wayland (1796–1865), Brown University's notable president from 1827 to 1855, whose over seventy published works, most significantly his Elements of Moral Science (1836), made important contributions to the then-emerging fields of moral science, political economy, and political philosophy. But if Baptists were limited in their contributions to national literature, their vitality on the frontier and in rural areas made a strong impact on popular thought and values. Communication through sermons and publications serving the needs of those with a rudimentary education encouraged and enabled the Baptist tendency to urge laypersons to aspire to leadership in the church. Also, their emphasis on biblical knowledge and education through Sabbath schools and academies helped to significantly raise literacy among uneducated populations. The colporteurs of the Publication Society, for example, took printed literature and rudimentary education to people in frontier and remote areas with no access to libraries, schools, or regular distribution of literature.

THE CULTURE OF BAPTIST MISSIONS

In this period Baptists developed an ethos—even a significant subculture—around the support of missions and missionaries. Baptist missions were perpetuated by continued distribution of stories about the travels of missionaries. Missionary reports and tales soon developed what might be called a "mythology of Baptist missions." Many who became missionaries were inspired by the tales and reports of mission activity and the mythology of adventure, sacrifice, and noble, godly purpose their commitments reflected. The huge enterprise that mission activity fashioned in this era was fueled by a fusion of religious fervor tinged with the romanticism of the age.

The core, enduring story of missions was generated by the activities of missionaries Adoniram and Ann Haseltine Judson. Adoniram Judson (1788–1850) was reared as a Congregationalist Deist with an emphasis on rationalist thought. Later he experienced a conversion to more evangelical Christian beliefs during the Second Great Awakening, which was a countrywide revival between 1790 and 1820 expanding the personal, emotional, and evangelical religious sentiments first experienced in the mid-eighteenth century. This powerful movement added an urge to humanitarian reform and missions to non-Christians to the personalism of evangelical theology. Judson then attended Andover Seminary, where he determined to be a missionary. Later, while onboard ship to India, Judson, his wife Ann (1789–1826), and their compatriot Luther Rice (1783–1836) all converted to Baptist views. Their shift deprived Congregational missions of a rising star and brought to Baptist missions not only a new and dynamic ambition but also dedicated, talented, and charismatic personalities to lead it. The Judsons established an enduring Christian presence in Burma (Myanmar). As part of their work the Judsons translated portions of the Bible into Burmese languages.

Ann Judson also learned Siamese (Thai) and translated significant biblical texts into that language. Ann became a frequent contributor to American periodicals and publications that communicated stories about her life amidst a culture unknown to most Americans. In this time when women's roles were largely confined to the home, and before the publication of popular magazines, especially women's magazines, her observations, stories, and personal expressions of faith, especially in the face of family loss and tragedy, were eagerly read by a wide audience. Poor health caused her return to the United States in 1822, where she wrote a history of the Burmese work titled American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire, published in 1823.

Work in foreign missions was dangerous, especially for women who faced childbirth and its frequent complications in a primitive environment without medical attention. Judson's experience of loss was typical: Ann Judson died in 1826. Adoniram's second wife, Sarah Hall Boardman (1803–1845), also died in service. Judson met his third wife, Emily Chubbuck (1817–1854), a professional writer, while searching for someone to write Sarah's biography. Emily accomplished this task before her own death in 1854. The romanticized stories and biographies of the Judsons and, soon, those who followed them in mission service both in America and abroad inspired generations of Baptists and others. Francis Wayland recounted Judson's work in a scholarly tone in A Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D. in 1853. And through their missionary reports and writings and the interpretations of them by others in such magazines as the Baptist Missionary Magazine, the Latter Day Luminary (1818), the Christian Watchman (1819), the Columbian Star (1822), and the Religious Herald (1828), missionaries expanded popular knowledge of the American West and of cultures around the world. Indeed, published and unpublished writings of Baptist missionaries remain the strongest source of Western knowledge about the cultures and social dynamics of Asia, Africa, and elsewhere during this period.

BAPTIST ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE AND CONTROVERSIES

As missions emerged as the common focus of Baptist development, better denominational structure and organization were required. In order to encourage and provide financial support for mission activity, local, regional, and national missionary societies quickly developed. Frequent correspondence between these bodies became the journals of Baptist denominational development. Also, because Baptist churches were independent bodies and were generally protective of their local autonomy, a universally recognized need for guides to Baptist church "order" became urgent. Therefore, this period witnessed the emergence of a number of "church manuals"—volumes that guided church organizational life.

Baptist manuals achieved remarkable circulation among churches in need of direction. The first, William Crowell's (1806–1871) The Church Member's Manual, was published in 1847. Francis Wayland offered a somewhat intellectual and theological approach to Baptist practices in Notes on the Principles and Practices of Baptist Churches (1857). The New York pastor Edward T. Hiscox (1814–1901) published his The Baptist Church Directory in 1859, and James M. Pendleton (1811–1891) likewise published his Church Manual in 1867. The latter two works maintained a strong readership well into the twentieth century: by then Pendleton's manual had sold at least 150,000 copies. Hiscox's Directory was followed by several additional volumes, including Principles and Practices for Baptist Churches, which also enjoyed a long publication history. In the 1960s a volume that drew materials from several of his works was published as The Hiscox Guide for Baptist Churches, and in 1995 an expanded, revised, and rewritten work based on his materials was offered as The New Hiscox Guide for Baptist Churches.

Despite the unifying focus of missions and the creation of denominational structure to support it, controversy occupied much of Baptist energy in this period. One subject was the mission enterprise itself. The antimissionary Baptists reflected an extreme Calvinist view that because God alone offered salvation, mission attempts were a kind of interference in God's power. Daniel Parker (1781–1844), the move-ment's most articulate spokesman, published Views on the Two Seeds Taken from Genesis in 1826 as the move-ment's fullest articulation. From 1829 to 1831 he also circulated his beliefs through a journal called the Church Advocate.

Another movement, restorationism, grew out of Baptist ranks. It expressed the belief that the true church had become lost through corrupt doctrine and alliances with secular powers. Restorationists asserted that they had re-created apostolic Christianity, or the Christian church of the first generation of Christian believers, directly from the New Testament. Their perspectives were most fully expressed in the works of Barton Warren Stone (1772–1844), Thomas Campbell (1763–1854), and Alexander Campbell (1788–1866). Alexander Campbell was especially effective in articulating his opinions in several journals, notably the Christian Baptist (1823–1829) and the Millennial Harbinger (1830–1863). Eventually Campbell and his followers rejected Baptist affiliation and formed a new "Campbellite" (later, "Christian," or "Disciples of Christ") denomination.

Partly in response to the Campbellites, the land-markists claimed a unique historical authenticity for Baptists, tracing an unbroken line directly to the New Testament church. One leader, George Orchard, wrote that Baptists were "the only Christian community which has stood since the times of the Apostles" (p. xviii), thus preserving pure doctrines ever since. The term "landmark" was taken from an essay published in 1854 by James M. Pendleton in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in a pamphlet titled An Old Landmark Reset. Other works by Pendleton, James R. Graves (1820–1893), and Amos Cooper Dayton (1813–1865) asserted their claims. Dayton's landmark polemic was in the form of a novel published as Theodosia Ernest in 1857.

And when I came, and saw her not

In all the place around,

They pointed out a grassy spot,

Where she lay underground.

And soon another loved one fled,

And sought her mother's side;

In vain I stayed her drooping head;

She panted, gasped, and died.

A number of other controversies regarding church organization, the use of musical instruments, a variety of theological interpretations regarding salvation, the role of humankind in salvation, and other matters also emerged in the period. However, no controversy compared to the debate engendered by slavery. Like the entire American nation, Baptists were subsumed in the debates and controversies leading to the Civil War from the 1830s onward. In 1845 this controversy resulted in the Baptists abandoning the loosely organized "Triennial Convention" structure that had provided the network to unify and support missions, encourage publications, and nurture educational and other joint endeavors since the 1820s. South and North went separate ways.

Baptists were well represented in expressing opinion in print, mostly in denominational journals and publications, arguing all sides of this towering issue in American life. In the South, Richard Furman (1755–1825) articulated views in defense of Christian support of slavery in "Exposition of the Views of the Baptists, Relative to the Coloured Population of the United States" (1823) and other articles published regionally. In his Elements of Moral Science, Francis Wayland argued that slavery was inappropriate, but he based his argument on Enlightenment rather than biblical approaches. Wayland, ever anxious about any authoritative body that might interfere in local church prerogatives, sought a middle way on the issue of churches and slavery and searched for allies to protect Baptist organizations from takeover by either abolitionist or proslavery sentiment. Ultimately no compromise was found, and Baptists, like the rest of the nation, were increasingly divided on this issue as the period came to a close.

CONCLUSION

The period 1820–1870 was a formative era for Baptists in the expanding United States. During that time Baptists' central passion was defined; foundations of denominational identity and structure were laid; theological issues were clarified, if not always resolved; and the extraordinary diversity that ultimately came to define Baptists theologically, racially, culturally, and politically appeared. A once-beleaguered minority among American Protestants was becoming a signifi-cant majority. As a result, their contributions to cultural and literary life were massive if not immediately recognized. Their most significant leaders, writers, and spokespersons would emerge in the next generations.

See also Calvinism; Evangelicals; Protestantism; Religion

Everett C. Goodwin