The Separate Baptist Revival and Its Influence in the South
The Separate Baptists took
their origin in Connecticut. Valentine Wightman was a grandson of
Edward Wightman, the last man burned at the stake in England in
1612. Valentine Wightman was born in 1681 and raised in Rhode
Island. He was saved and became a member of the North Kingstown
Baptist Church. In 1705 he moved to Groton Connecticut and founded
the first Baptist church in that state. He pastored there for 42
years and was succeeded by his son, Timothy Wightman. In 1743
Valentine Wightman and his church began a mission church at North
Stonington Connecticut. Waitt Palmer was the first pastor.It was
just at this time that the Great Awakening had come to prominence.
In Tolland Connecticut in 1745 a Congregationalist named Shubal
Stearns, under the influence of the Great Awakening, withdrew from
his church and organized a Separate Congregational Church. By 1751
he became convinced, by contact with Waitt Palmer, that infant
baptism was not scriptural and became a Baptist. Palmer baptized
Stearns at night in the Willamantic River because of great
opposition to his views. He then organized a Baptist church in
Tolland.
Before Stearns was saved Daniel Marshall had
been saved in 1726 at age 20, before Jonathan Edwards' revival of
1736 and before the appearance in 1740 of George Whitfield, and
served as a deacon for 20 years in a Congregational Church in
Windsor, Connecticut. But by 1744 he had made himself "odious" to
that church because he had become opposed to infant baptism. By
1750, before Stearns was baptized, Marshall was probably attending a
Baptist church in Windsor but had not been immersed for lack of a
minister to administer the ordinance. In 1744 Marshall's first wife
died in childbirth and, at a graveside service, the Congregational
minister and his people left and dispersed, so that Marshall had to
bury his wife himself. In 1747 Marshall married Martha Stearns, a
sister of Shubal Stearns.
Because of Congregational opposition to
Baptists, Marshall decided in 1754 to become a missionary to the
Mohawk tribe of Indians in New York. But the French and Indian War
made his labors here impossible, and he moved to Opequon, near
Winchester, VA. He and his family joined Mill Creek Baptist Church
where the pastor, Samuel Heaton, baptized Marshall. A warm, old
fashioned revival broke out and Marshall was soon licensed to
preach.
In the Fall of 1754, Stearns and his family and
five couples related to him by blood or marriage, left Tolland and
joined Marshall at Cacapon Creek 30 miles west of Winchester, where
they built shelters and began to preach. This area was also unsafe
because of hostile Indians, and in June of 1755 Stearns received a
letter from North Carolina from some New England friends who had
gone there. They told of a need for preaching and an eagerness to
hear it.
Stearns and Marshall and their families, 16
people in all, left Cacapon and travelled down the Great
Philadelphia Wagon Road through the Shenandoah Valley. In Virginia
and the Carolinas it was actually only a trail through the
wilderness and an Indian trading path. In Roanoke County, VA they
went through a gap in the Blue Ridge into Franklin county. From here
they travelled the trail, close to the present U.S. Highway 220,
until they came to Sandy Creek, near Liberty, in Randolph County,
North Carolina. Here they acquired land, built homes, and organized
Sandy Creek Separate Baptist Church on November 22, 1755.
The Separate Baptists were dedicated to the
same old time religion that has characterized the Greer Baptist
Campmeeting and Pelham and Tabernacle Baptist Churches. They
preached a whosoever will gospel with strong gestures and tears and
altar calls during which the preachers left the platform and went
through the congregation exhorting sinners to come forward to be
saved. They preached the new birth just as we do. The entire
congregation (there were no choirs or special songs) sang the gospel
in folk tunes such as Amazing Grace was later set to. They rattled
the rafters with their songs and were free to testify in church, to
say "amen" or "glory," and to run or shout if they were moved by the
Holy Ghost. One of the reasons the Separate Baptists kept clear of
the Regular and Particular Baptists was that these other Baptists
held more "orderly" or "dignified" services. But a few Regular
Baptists, such as the Chappawomsick Church in Virginia, pastored by
Davis Thomas and Daniel Fristoe, also got in on the "new light"
revival and held services that were much like those of the
Separates. The other reason the Separate Baptists kept that name
until after the American Revolution was their obedience to 2
Corinthians 6:17: "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I
will receive you."
Within a space of 17 years after its
organization Sandy Creek had planted 42 daughter churches, from
which 125 preachers had been called. Within 50 years it had 1000
daughter churches. Shubal Stearns organized the first daughter
churches into the Sandy Creek Baptist Association. When Stearns died
in 1771 his church had 606 members, and on his monument at Sandy
Creek are the words:
On this site in November-December 1755 Rev.
Shubal Stearns, his wife, and those who came with him, seven other
families, sixteen souls in all, built their first meeting house
where they administered the Lord's supper. "It is a mother church,
nay a grandmother and a great grandmother. All the Separate Baptists
sprang hence: not only eastward towards the sea, but westward
towards the great river Mississippi, but northward to Virginia and
southward to South Carolina and Georgia. The Word went forth from
this Sion. And great was the company of them who published it in so
much that her converts were as drops of morning dew."
The Baptist historian, Morgan Edwards of the
Philadelphia Association, said of the Separate Baptists:
"I believe a preternatural and invisible hand
works in the assemblies of the Separate Baptists, bearing down the
human mind, as was the case in primitive churches."
Daniel Marshall organized Abbot's Creek Baptist
Church in what is now Winston-Salem and was ordained there. He also
organized Horn's Creek and Big Stephen's Creek near Edgefield, SC
and Kiokee Baptist Church in Appling, Georgia, near Augusta. A
convert of Stearns, Philip Mulkey, organized Fairforest Baptist
Church near Union, SC, the first Baptist church in upstate South
Carolina. Just before Stearns' death, in 1771, the Sandy Creek
Association was divided into the Broad River Association in North
Carolina, the Congaree Association in South Carolina, and the
Virginia Association.
The Battle of Alamance took place May 16, 1771.
Here the Regulators, mostly Baptists with some Quakers, were
attempting to regulate the behavior of Governor William Tryon and
his appointed agents who ruled the colony of North Carolina. The
state church of the colony was the Episcopalian church. Tryon had
imposed unjust taxation on the frontier settlers. The officials of
the state were corrupt enough to pocket a large portion of the
excessive taxes they collected. There was a 10 to 1
underrepresentation, per capita, of the frontier counties in the
legislature at New Bern. The government regarded Baptists and
Quakers as enemies of Anglican order and, because of the success of
their evangelism, a hindrance to the growth of the Episcopal church.
The frontier regulators organized resistance to these injustices and
confronted Tryon's select militia, which was mostly Presbyterian and
Episcopal, at Alamance Battleground, not far from Sandy Creek.
Tryon's militia attacked the poorly armed and poorly led Regulators
and defeated them. After the battle Tryon hanged 12 of the
Regulators and laid waste to many Baptist plantations in the area.
Sandy Creek dropped from 606 members to 14 within a year of the
battle. But in the providence of God the Baptists were spread by
this defeat to Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and to what is now
Tennessee.
The majority of the Sandy Creek refugees went
to the junction of the Watauga and Holston rivers near Gray,
Tennessee and there established Buffalo Ridge Baptist Church,
formally constituted in 1778, the first church in Tennessee. Its
first pastor was Tidence Lane. Many relatives and descendants of
these refuges from Sandy Creek became "Overmountain Men" who left
their families exposed to Indian attack and came, 1040 strong, over
the Blue Ridge Mountains to lead the effort which whipped Patrick
Ferguson's British and Tories at the Battle of Kings Mountain in
1780, just 9 years after Alamance. Tidence Lane and 9 of his sons
were present at Kings Mountain. They exacted just revenge for the
Baptist defeat at Alamance. There were 1040 Overmountain Men of a
total of 1800 American soldiers. They made the difference with their
long rifles, their ability to shoot, and their use of tactics
borrowed in battles with the Indians. Kings Mountain was the turning
point of the Revolutionary War in the South.
Many North Carolina Baptists fled to Virginia.
Samuel Harris, the "apostle of Virginia," Dutton Lane, John Waller,
and Lewis and Elijah Craig were prominent among them. Harris was
baptized by Daniel Marshall at Dan River Baptist Church. In 1773
there were 34 Baptist churches and 3195 members in Virginia. In 1774
there were 51 churches and 3954 members. In 1775 the Baptists in
Virginia sent a notice to the state convention, a revolutionary
legislature which was considering independence from England, and
offered to allow Baptists to enlist in the colonial army and to
allow Baptist ministers to serve as chaplains. By 1783 at the close
of the Revolution there were 10,000 Baptists in Virginia, mostly
Separate Baptist. In 1790, when the last colony to ratify, Rhode
Island, accepted the Constitution, there were 65,233 Baptists in the
13 states, and 35,324 of these were in the South.
Many Baptist preachers, Samuel Harris, John
Waller, Elijah Craig, and others, were imprisoned or harmed bodily
by the officials of Virginia, where the state church was Episcopal.
Baptists in Virginia refused to accept licenses to preach from the
Episcopal government. Patrick Henry rode 60 miles to defend Lewis
and Joseph Craig and Aaron Bledsoe, who were imprisoned for
preaching without a license. He said to the court:
"From that period, when our fathers left the
land of their nativity for settlement in these American wilds, for
liberty, for civil and religious liberty, for liberty of conscience,
to worship their Creator according to their conceptions of Heaven's
revealed will, from the moment they placed foot on the American
continent, and in deeply imbedded forests sought an asylum from
persecution and tyranny, from that moment despotism was crushed; for
fetters of darkness were broken, and Heaven decreed that man should
be free-free to worship God according to the Bible. Were it not for
this, in vain have been the efforts and sacrifices of the colonists;
in vain were all their sufferings and bloodshed to subjugate this
new world, if we, their offspring, must still be oppressed and
persecuted.
But may it please your worships, permit me to
inquire once more, for what are these men about to be tried? This
paper says 'for preaching the Gospel of the Son of God.' Great God!
For preaching the Gospel of the Savior to Adam's fallen race. What
law have they violated?"
The men were set free.
Elijah Craig was imprisoned in Orange County,
VA in 1768 but simply kept preaching out through the bars of his
cell, attracting large crowds. James Madison, then a boy, and his
father heard imprisoned Baptists preaching from the jail windows.
This is confirmed in an article from the Annual Report of the
American Historical Society for 1901, written by Gaillard Hunt of
the U. S. Department of State. Madison was moved by hearing Elijah
Craig, became a proponent of religious liberty, and later introduced
the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment prohibited Congress from
establishing an official state church.
John Leland came from western Massachusetts,
first to South Carolina and then to Virginia, was ordained in 1777,
and established several Baptist churches. He knew Elijah Craig and
John Waller and Samuel Harris and was a neighbor of James Madison in
Orange County. Madison, more than any other man, was responsible for
the Constitution. The Baptists of Virginia, including Leland, were
opposed to ratification of the Constitution without a Bill of Rights
which would specifically limit the powers of the central government.
Leland was a candidate from Orange county for election to the state
convention which would debate and vote on ratification. If he had
been elected, and it appeared that he would be, he and Patrick
Henry, who was also opposed, might have prevented ratification by
Virginia. This would have had serious consequences for the formation
of a stable and lasting central U. S. government, which would have
been so disjointed without Virginia that there would have been no
union. Many of the first and greatest leaders of the country,
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry, and George Mason,
were from Virginia. Jefferson was the author of the Virginia Statute
for Religious Liberty.
In the providence of God, James Madison got a
letter from Joseph Spencer in March, 1788 telling him that Leland
was likely to win election as a delegate from Orange County. He
asked Madison to visit Leland to discuss the election. Madison came
to John Leland's home on the eve of the election, and Leland
obtained a promise from Madison that a Bill of Rights, including the
first amendment which prevented the establishment of an official
state church in this country, would be introduced in the First
Congress. Leland was satisfied and reassured and so withdrew from
the election and advised his Baptist constituents in Orange County
to vote for Madison. This news may well have passed to other
Virginia counties. Madison and Gordon won election from Orange
County. Two delegates from each county were chosen for the state
convention. The convention ratified the constitution by 187 to 168,
a thin margin of 19 votes out of 355 cast. If Leland had been there
with Patrick Henry to argue against ratification the vote might have
been against. I believe Leland would have prayed about his
withdrawal, perhaps he prayed at the close of his meeting with
Madison. I believe he was led of the Lord to withdraw, having peace
in his heart that there would be a Bill of Rights.
There are two witnesses who confirm that such a
meeting took place. One was George Nixon Briggs, a Baptist and
governor of Massachusetts, who spoke with Leland in 1837 about the
matter after Leland had retired to Massachusetts, and the other was
John Strode Barbour, a native of Orange County. These witnesses are
named in an article by Samuel Chiles Mitchell, Professor at the
University of Richmond, which appeared in the Religious Herald of
October 18, 1934. This paper was published for years in Richmond in
association with the University of Richmond which was the Baptist
School for Virginia. The article is entitled "JAMES MADISON AND HIS
CO-WORKER, JOHN LELAND." Mr. Mitchell's article was a transcript of
an address he gave at the Bicentennial of Orange County on September
26, 1934 in the Grove at Gum Spring on the site of John Leland's
home. The meeting of Briggs and Leland is also recounted in the
biography of Leland in the Annals of the American Pulpit. A stone
monument with a bronze bust of Leland was placed at Gum Spring by
the Sons of the American Revolution of Berkshire County,
Massachusetts, the home of John Leland. The Gum Spring monument is
on Virginia State Highway 20, a few miles Northeast of
Charlottesville, not far from Jefferson's home at Monticello and
even closer to Madison's home, Montpelier.
The Separate Baptist revival, in which Shubal
Stearns and Daniel Marshall served so faithfully, had as one of its
consequences the winning of many converts in Virginia and the
establishment of many Baptist churches. Without it those relatives
of Jefferson who were Baptist, and taught him the purest form of
democracy he had ever seen, might not have inspired him, James
Madison would not have been affected by hearing the unjustly
imprisoned Elijah Craig preach out the windows of the Orange County
jail, and John Leland might not have been able to exert such an
important influence on the Bill of Rights.
May God grant that our independent Baptist
churches, which are slowly forgetting their heritage and getting
away from old time religion, going after strange new contemporary
ways, dropping the name Baptist for community church or even calling
themselves worship centers, will think on these things and honour
the landmarks their Separate Baptist fathers have set.
Research by James H. Sightler, M.D. for Sightler
Publications. This summary of the story of the Separate Baptists is
taken from Dr. Sightler's course in Baptist History at Tabernacle
Baptist College, where he has taught this subject since 1990. He
also gave a series of lectures on the history of Baptists, including
the Separates, at Carolina Bible College in Concord, NC on May
22-23, 1997 and on March 4-5, 1999.
James H. Sightler, M.D.
Sightler Publications
January 18, 2004
Copyright
