Chapter
5
Southern
Baptist Beginnings
Dr.
Baker continued his narration: “When Baptists in this country formed the
first of their three national societies in 1814, many of their leaders
recognized that there were numerous social, cultural, economic, and
political differences between the businessmen of the North, the farmers of
the West, and the planters of the South. These differences had already
created much rivalry between the several sections of the new nation. Each
section continued to revive old colonial disagreements and wrestled with
questions about how the new constitution should be interpreted, what
constituted the final legal power, and similar problems.
“Perhaps
most critical of all was the slavery issue. This practice had been forced
upon the colonies by
“The same
moral blindness that caused a minority of northern businessmen to purchase
and import slaves from
“These
tensions were already building at the very time when Baptists united in
the three national societies for Christian work. Naturally, Baptist unity
was affected by such tensions. Furthermore, the meetings of these
societies between 1814 and 1845 revealed some basic differences in the
thinking of northern and southern Baptists.
“Southern
leaders, for one thing, desired a stronger denominational unity than the
society plan afforded, but were unable to achieve it. In addition, just
three years after the organization of the national home mission body in
1832, many Baptist leaders of the South openly urged the formation of a
separate southern body for home missions. They believed that southern
mission needs were not being met by the northern-based society.
“A separate
southern home mission body was actually organized in 1839, but it died
after three years. In his history of the Southern Baptist Convention, W.
W. Barnes expressed the view that these differences between northern and
southern Baptists would have brought separation eventually, even if there
had been no slavery-abolition issue. However, when the ‘slave states’
voted as a bloc in Congress (and particularly in the Senate), threatening
to upset the political balance, the slavery issue became a political
football as well as a moral issue.
“The
meetings of the three Baptist national societies in the 1840s brought
angry debates between Northerners and Southerners. These debates concerned
the interpretation of the constitutions of the societies on slavery, the
right of Southerners to receive missionary appointments, the authority of
a denominational society to discipline church members, and the neglect of
the South in the appointment of missionaries. The stage was set for
separation.
“In 1844,
Georgia Baptists asked the Home Mission Society to appoint a slaveholder
to be a missionary in
Separation
of North and South. “On May 8, 1845, about 293 Baptist leaders of
the South gathered at the
“Southern
Baptist leaders noted that Paul and Barnabas had disagreed over the use of
John Mark in mission service, and ‘two lines of service were opened for
the benefit of the churches.’ These leaders hoped that ‘with no
sharpness of contention, with no bitterness of spirit . . . we may part
asunder and open two lines of service to the heathen and the destitute.’
“On May 10,
1845, the Southern Baptist Convention was provisionally organized under a
new constitution, which was ratified the following year in Richmond, Virginia. In their address to the public, Convention president William B. Johnson
and other Southern Baptist leaders pointed out that Baptists North and
South were still brethren; that separation involved only the home and
foreign mission societies and did not include the third national society
for tract publication; and that this new organization would permit them to
have a body that would be willing to appoint Southerners to home and
foreign mission fields.
“At the 1845
meeting, Southern Baptists were faced not only with the question of
whether to organize a separate body but also with the problem of what
kind. Baptists, like other denominations which give final authority to the
local churches, have had difficulty in trying to form an effective general
body without threatening the local authority. This was the reason that the
association-type plan had been viewed with suspicion by some churches,
resulting in the adoption of the society plan for missionary and other
Christian work.
“In
safeguarding the authority of the churches, however, the society plan made
it difficult to secure unity and effectiveness in denominational work.
Southern Baptists, at their meeting in 1845, deliberately rejected the
method of having a separate society for each kind of Christian service.
They chose instead to follow the more centralized pattern of the older
associational plan to form only one general convention closely related to
the churches for all Christian ministries. They felt that they could
provide safeguards in Convention operation that would protect the
authority of the local churches. Rather than form independent societies
for Christian ministries, Southern Baptists elected a board of managers to
supervise foreign missions and another to supervise home missions, both
under the authority of the Convention. Other boards for additional
Christian ministries would be formed later by the Convention.”