An Historical Examination of the Doctrine of the Church Among Baptists With Special Reference to Southern Baptists and Church Purity - Chapter 4.1

Influences and Changes in the Baptist Doctrine of the Church
in the Eighteenth Century

Part One
The First Great Awakening

It is our goal and purpose in this chapter to speak of the influences brought to bear upon Baptists in America during the eighteenth century, which would over a period of time tend to undercut their strong covenantal concept of the church. We must realize, however, that Baptists did not live in a vacuum. Therefore, one cannot even begin to understand these influences and developments in Baptist life and history without first being knowledgeable of events which transpired on the whole religious scene in America at this time. Hence, the writer feels a necessity to present a picture of the religious life and events in general in America at this period, and then to speak more particularly of their influence upon Baptists.

American Religion Prior to the First Great Awakening

It is known to most anyone even vaguely familiar with American history that the early settlements in the seventeenth century were religiously oriented, influenced, and controlled. One set of writers point out that for the first several years the settlements in the new world sought to reproduce, as nearly as possible, the pattern of life, even church life, from the old world.74 Theirs was a fidelity to and an emphasis upon the old world's inherited forms and patterns.

But as others note, this was a new world with a new environment. Old world patterns could not meet the new world's needs and problems75 (so some thought). Mead shows us that the new land with new opportunity to build as one wished in a seemingly endless continent cut off from the patterns and traditions of the past, produced a new man.76 As time passed, the second and third and following generations were not as convinced of the sacredness of these inherited forms and practices. Neither were they as concerned about the old theological issues and subjects, nor were they as respectful toward the authoritarian church structures, organizations, creeds and pronouncements.77

With this new unbridled freedom and opportunity to be what he wanted to be, to go where he wanted to go, and to build in like manner, there was bred a rugged individualist with a highly independent and strong-willed spirit, and one who began to question the traditional and the historical. Sweet notes, "The pioneer is always an independent individualist, determined to go his own way in religion as well as in politics."78 Speaking further of this early frontier condition and its pressure on American religious life, Sweet says, ". . . no single fact is more significant in its influence upon American religion."79

Gaustad, on the other hand, notes that the churches and organized religious life were becoming more institutionalized and less personal, more a product of instruction than of experience, and more of an affair of the intellect than of the emotions.80 Thus we see two factors at work, the external changes in organized religious life, and the internal changes in the frontier man, with both forces separating men from the churches and their influence.

McLoughlin described these prior to the First Great Awakening as times of confusion, an hour when it seemed the churches were incapable of meeting the needs of the people, with the pastors powerless to cure the sick souls before them, the doctrine insensible to the people, and authority in every area lacking authenticity and meaning. The whole situation seemed to be lacking rational, standards, or a faith which could relieve the people of their guilts, tensions, and fears.81

It is no wonder then that sin of every form began to abound in every place. In Boston at a Synod meeting on September 10, 1679 quite a lengthy lamentation and list of sins was reported.82 Among sins listed were pride, contention, rebellion against God, swearing and profanity, irreverence, Sabbath breaking, prayerlessness and godlessness in the homes, inordinate lusts and passions, hatreds, censures, backbiting, tale bearing, lawsuits, intemperance, immodest dress, nakedness, gaming, idleness, dishonesty, love of the world, etc.

Though the churches (all churches) were aware of the problem, they were not aware of any answer, but not because they did not seek to make some adjustments. However, their adjustments were, it seems, more of a compromise with the people and their sin than a solution to the problem. We refer here, first of all, to the Half-Way Covenant, which was a halfway church membership, which allowed those who had been baptized as infants to continue as members of the church, even though they had grown up into a life of sin and unconcern. The only restriction was that they could not receive the Lord's Supper.83

The next step of adjustment or compromise was called Stoddardneanism, a measure named after its most influential exponent, Solomon Stoddard, the powerful minister at Northampton, Massachusetts, and Jonathan Edwards' grandfather. This was the practice of allowing the baptized but unconverted the privilege of receiving the Lord's Supper in hopes it would lead to or contribute to their salvation.84

It is obvious that such measures as these would destroy the discipline of the churches, for as Tracy acknowledges ". . . unconverted members, generally, would not be strict in calling others to account for errors of doctrine or practice."85 But even more, these compromises led to spiritual confusion and the denial of the possibility of ever being able to tell a true believer from a hypocrite. Thus, the conclusion came that it was useless to insist on a profession of faith, and to even hope for or attempt to construct a local church that was composed only of real saints.86

Sweet speaks of the religious decadence of colonial America just prior to the Great Awakening by noting that the lower classes were influenced very little by organized religion, and only a small percentage were members of churches. He says that America in this period had more unchurched people than any other country.87

Now, of course, we have not been speaking specifically of Baptists, but of the other denominations more particularly. Furthermore, as we come to the First Great Awakening, we shall continue the story as it unfolded outside of Baptist churches. In time, however, we shall see how these events did involve and include Baptists in the thrust of the reactions and influences which developed.

The First Great Awakening

It was into the forgoing context of events and affairs that there came what has been called the First Great Awakening. There had been stirrings through other men, such as the stirrings under Theodore J. Frelinghuysen in the Dutch Reformed Churches in Raritan Valley in the colony of New Jersey.88 And there was the Scotch-Irish revival of the 1730's in the middle colony influenced greatly by William Tennant's Log College.89 But the greatest name and most influential personality was Jonathan Edwards. Sweet says the revival began under Edwards in December of 1734 from a series of sermons he was preaching on justification by faith alone.90 As far as Edwards the man is concerned, he was by no means what some today would imagine him to have been. Sweet tells us that he was not a popular preacher, but rather

He lived the life of a student, spending thirteen hours daily in his study, writing two sermons each week, one to be preached on Sunday, the other at the weekly lecture. To him sermon preparation and study were far more important than pastoral ministration, for he seldom visited among his people. In the pulpit he was quiet, speaking without gesture, and in a voice not loud, but distinct and penetrating. It was the content of his sermons, filled as they were with fire and life, combined with remarkable personality and presence of the preacher, which accounts for the results which now began to manifest among his hearers.91

It is clear, also, that Edwards was a strong Calvinist, yet his was not a dead, cold and unevangelistic Calvinism. Rather his doctrinal commitment was flavored with an element of piety. Sweet says concerning Edwards that ". . . it was only by impregnating his Calvinism with pietism that Jonathan Edward's gospel was rendered effective in reaching the hearts of his people at Northampton.92 What exactly this element of piety in Edward's thinking was, Sweet does not spell out. Others have noted it to be a technique of preaching aimed at persuading the will, engaging the affections and deepening the sense of personal responsibility in the hearer.93 He did not expound doctrine without application upon God to do His work. Edwards defends the appeal to the emotions as legitimate and proper, and at the same time warns concerning dangers and possibilities of false emotions in one of his books.94

Just how much Edwards may have intricately and technically modified Calvinism or Calvinism's evangelistic concerns is beyond the scope of this paper. The point is that Edwards was a Calvinist, and that the Great Awakening was grounded on this commitment of thought. For example, Heimert acknowledge that, "The revival in America, unlike that of the Wesley's, built and throve on the preaching of Calvinistic doctrine."95 He adds ". . . the typical sermon of the Great Awakening was a careful disquisition on such points of theology as man's total depravity or unconditional election of the saints."96

Goen tells us:

A classic Reformed doctrine which emerged quite prominently in the revival was that of sovereign grace---even irresistible grace. This means that salvation is entirely a free gift of God, who bestows it according to his inscrutable purposes upon whomever he will, and that no one can possibly merit or deserve it, and that those to whom it comes ("the elect") are completely unable to resist or refuse it.97

So we see that there came to Edwards' church an unusual manifestation resulting in crowds thronging the building in high emotion. Sweet acknowledges there is every indication to believe that Edwards handled this situation very adequately so as not to discredit these outward manifestations.98 Part of that method was to encourage those under conviction to come to him privately so that he might deal with them further, when the emotional stress had subsided.

It is not our intent to set Edwards in complete antithesis to all other revivalists of this era, but it does seem as revivalism spread, though it spread in a Calvinistic frame of thought, that many eventually drifted into excesses and overbalance in the area of the emotions. As the movement unfolded there seems to have developed more and more a highly experiential and emotional thrust. This is not to say that this element is totally wrong, but only to recognize its presence. and the possibility of excess at times.

Concerning these emotional manifestations, let us note Lumpkin's observation, when he says:

Such manifestations appeared under the preaching of both Edwards and Whitefield, and both men saw validity in them and at first took no steps to suppress them. They were regarded as marks of divine favor. However, some of the preachers and exhorters who followed Edwards and Whitefield, supposing that the approval of such manifestations by the greatest preachers of their acquaintance gave them license to exploit this form of excitement, encouraged extravagant emotional display. Hysterical "screechings, crying out," shouting, barking, dancing, trances, and visions became common in some areas. These manifestations "assumed the character of an epidemic" toward the climax of the awakening in 1740.99

Though dramatic expressions of feeling took place under Edwards and Whitefield, others (not necessarily all) who followed, knowingly or unknowingly, began to make this the standard of their judgment of God's favor and presence, and thus it also became the goal of their preaching, rather than the by-product of it. Sweet points out that it was only natural for preachers to seek to imitate Whitefield, but that often they copied his faults and not his virtues.100 Sweet indicates that the greatest excesses of the New England Revival took place after Whitefield's departure.

It is little wonder then that some have concluded that some of the revivalists ". . . put on all the heat they could and with some exceptions, appealed to the emotions more than to the intelligence.101 Goen believes the most striking characteristic of the great awakening was religious excitement.102

Summary

To summarize what we have said: the Great Awakening had a solid Calvinism as its basis; it was balanced with a preaching which was both doctrinal in depth and soundness, yet at the same time laid great stress on man's responsibility before God. We have seen that at times this balance overturned and ended in excessive and uncalled-for emotionalism. Such an overbalance was inconsistent with the Calvinistic foundation, but nevertheless, it existed with some of its promoters unaware of the inconsistency and others not caring.

Thus at a time when American religion was decadent, the colonies were hit with the unexpected impact of the Great Awakening in 1740. Many professed salvation. Others who professed salvation previously now professed renewal. Spiritual interest and religious life in general were touched deeply, yet not without some accompanying excesses and inconsistencies. The question we now face is what followed this Great Awakening, and how did all of these events impact Baptists? That will be our subject in Part Two of this chapter.

Notes:

74Shelton H. Smith, Robert T. Handy, and Lefferts A. Loetscher, American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), Volume I, p. 189.
75William Warren Sweet, Revivalism in America, Its Origin, Growth and Decline (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945), pp. 24-26.
76Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1963), see the whole of Chapter I.
77Smith, American Christianity, Volume I, pp 310-311.
78William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New Your: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1950), p. 4.
79Ibid., p. 3.
80Edwin Scott Gaustad, The Great Awakening in New England (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), p. 14.
81William G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent 1630-1833---The Baptists and Separation of Church and State Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), Volume I, p. 335.
82Smith, American Christianity, Volume I, pp. 205-212, taken from "The Necessity of Reformation, with the Expedients Subservient Thereunto, Asserted in Two Questions," and The Results of Three Synods (Boston) pp. 94-117.
83Gaustad, Awakening, pp. 10-11.
84Ibid., p. 12.
85Joseph Tracey, The Great Awakening, A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield, 1740-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 160)
86C. C. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 160.
87Sweet, Story of Religion in America, p. 5.
88William W. Sweet, Religion in Colonial America (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942, pp. 274-275.
89Ibid., pp. 275-277.
90Sweet, Story of Religion in America, p. 129.
91Ibid.
92Sweet, Colonial America, p. 282
93Nelson R. Burr, James Ward Smith and A Leland Jamison, A Critical Bibliography of Religion in America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 132.
94Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections (Grand Rapids: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1971).
95Alan Heimert and Perry Miller, Editors, The Great Awakening (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1967), p. xxvi.
96Ibid.
97Goen, Revivalism, p. 42.
98Sweet, Colonial America, p. 283.
99William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Foundations in the South, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1961), p. 5
100 Sweet, Colonial America, p. 287.
101 Mead, Experiment, p. 22. quoting Winfred E. Garrison, "Characteristics of American Organized Religion," Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCVI (March 1948), p. 19.
102 Goen, Revivalism, p. 17.