Sandy Creek Revisited: A Critique: Final Chapter

Today I continue with the review of “Sandy Creek Revisited” the latest issue of Founders Journal.  Dr. Tom Ascol, Founders Journal Editor, hailed this issue as a fresh new look at Sandy Creek and one that would offer some ground-breaking analysis for us to consider...>>>

Before I begin, I want to say two things:  first, I do not want this site to just deal with historical issues.  For my part, history stands crucially significant for us as we sift through who we are as persons, as societies and, yes, even as Churches and denominations.  But understanding history is not the whole and we do well not to think it is. 

Secondly, I am not fond of this particular type of review--especially today’s post.  For me, it seems so bleak and dark. And, frankly, I do not want to be perceived as a critic at heart.  I’m not.  My usual focus is to look for those things in which we agree and go from there.

Given that, it’s difficult for me to post the following critique.  I take absolutely no pleasure in it.  But some of these things really need to be pointed out, if, for no other reason, to assist some Southern Baptists who may feel bullied by a few aggressive guys who want to trash the very rich nonCalvinist heritage we possess and insist Southern Baptists’ only roots--indeed Southern Baptists’ REAL roots--are to be found only in the Calvinist garden. 

That's not counting that they also, by arguing from illegitimate  premises or misusing sources heap mounds of needless suspect upon the very tradition for which they contend.

Whew.  Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s begin. 

I mentioned in my last post that I possessed reservations about how Bridges dismissed with a vengeance those with whom he disagrees.  He wasted no time dismissing Drs. Fisher Humphreys and Walter Shurden--both credible Baptist scholars, regardless of their view of the Conservative Resurgence--as embracing a "popularized theory" of Southern Baptist roots. 

Bridges writes: 

"Many Southern Baptist historians...often perpetuate a popularized theory from Walter Shurden and Fisher Humphreys alleging that the "high church" Charlestonians were confessional Calvinists, while those in Sandy Creek Association were either opposed to Calvinism or believed in a 'softer' or 'moderate' or 'kinder, gentler' Calvinism."(p.2-3).

When I read this statement I realized it did not sound quite right for I had read Humphreys' book.  In addressing what Calvinists often lament--that is, Southern Baptists have defected from our Calvinist roots since all of the Founding Fathers of the Southern Baptist Convention were Calvinists--Humphreys writes: 

"But there is a complicating factor.  Historian Walter Shurden has pointed out that when the Convention organized in 1845 it already comprised four traditions.  The Convention includes what Shurden called the Charleston tradition, which was Calvinistic.  It also included a Sandy Creek tradition, which minimized Calvinism and emphasized evangelism.  It also included a Georgia tradition, which represented the Southernness and regionalness of the Convention, and a Tennessee tradition, which emphasized the distinctiveness of Baptist Churches.  To these four the late John Loftis has added a fifth, an evangelical-denominational tradition, which is strong in the Southwest."(Humphreys, p.72).

Far from only two traditions, Shurden bids four and Humphreys raises the antie to five by quoting Loftis.  Humphreys concludes that one tradition triumphed over all others including Calvinism, and that tradition was Sandy Creek. Humphreys says: “For more than a century the Sandy Creek tradition has won the hearts of more Southern Baptists than the Charleston tradition.” (Ibid. p.72).  

Disagreeing is one thing.  Nevertheless, for me, it is simply unacceptable to whittle down another's position and then pass it off as "popular theory."  Not to mention this tactic maligns two established scholars who deserve more respect for their views than that.

Secondly, Bridges makes much ado about Shubal Stearns having a formative influence on the Kehukee Association in Virginia.  He records:  "That Association [Kehukee] began as an association of Arminian churches, until 1765.  Calvinism's introduction is attributed to [Shubal] Stearns’s influence before coming to North Carolina after stopping in the Kehukee Association." (p.7). Similarly, Stearns influence on the Kehukee Association leading them to reform to Calvinism is mentioned three additional times including one in the conclusion (pp.8,10, 22). 

Note:  this is apparently an important point for Bridges because, in the entire first part of his paper (pp. 4-12) he attempts to join Separates and Regulars at the theological hip.  Thus, to make Stearns largely responsible for influencing a General Baptist Association to become Calvinistic is a homerun.

Here is the problem as I see it:  not one mainstream source could I locate that connects Stearns with the Kehukee Association.  Lumpkin, Semple, Howell nor McBeth mention Stearns with Kehukee.  The most significant source, "Concise History of Kehukee Association" by Lemuel Burkett and Jesse Read, Revised Edition by Henry Burkitt, 1850, only mentions Stearns several years after Kehukee was formed.  Understand:  perhaps there are sources that so link Stearns with transforming Kehukee to Calvinism.  I could not find it.  Perhaps you can.

There is one source, however, that mentions Stearns and Kehukee--the one Bridges cites.  It’s an internet article (http://reformedreader.org/history/ivey/ch08.htm).  So far so good.  The internet is a wonderful resource. 

But here is the insurmountable difficulty with Bridges citing this particular internet source:  it possesses no footnotes.  The reader does not know where the author got his information.  He could have gotten it from a source with which the average guy like me is not familiar. 

Or, he could have corrected my ignorance and shown me I missed it in a mainstream resource.  Granted.  But, on the other hand, he could have also gotten it from a talking squirrel. No one knows. 

For me, to quote a source one cannot identify is not only risky, it is flat unscholarly.  Is this the scholarship with which Founders Journal is made?  Are we to rely on uncheckable sources to reveal to us that Shubal Stearns influenced “reforming” an Arminian association of Baptist Churches into a Calvinistic one when all of the main sources attribute that influence to Peter Van Horn and Benjamin Miller sent by The Philadelphia Association?  Anyone interested in some beautiful beachfront property in the Smokies?  Hence, in my view, by citing illegitimate sources, Bridges seriously weakens his thesis.

I wish we could stop.  For this next part is not pretty.  In fact, as far as I am concerned, Bridges’ entire paper forfeits any credibility left.  The truth is, it probably needs to be retracted. 

Why?  Bridges’ research and citation of sources seems so flawed that it remains virtually impossible to trust.  If the sources cited in a work that I am able to validate is questionable, how am I to trust those citations to which I possess no access?  In short, for me at least, Bridges’ paper goes with Monday’s garbage.  Let me show you what I mean.

In a lengthy passage Bridges attempts to validate his thesis that Separates were thoroughly Calvinistic by arguing the entire South was becoming “Calvinized.” Here is the passage in its entirety:

“In addition, Southern historians regard religion of this time as a brand of Puritanism.  Fred Hobson points out that ‘Southern Puritanism was vastly different than the New England variety, less structured, less intellectual, more emotional--raw Calvinism; rather than the cerebral Puritanism of the Massachusetts Bay.’  Hobson notes that W. J. Cash saw popularized Calvinism as a part of the major dichotomy of Southern psychology.  The South was the world’s supreme paradox of hedonism in the midst of Puritanism.  Cash believed that by the mid-19th century the whole South, including the Methodists, had moved toward a position of thorough-going Calvinism in feeling if not in formal theology." 

It would seem, then, that a historical thesis that ‘moderates’ or ‘softens’ the Calvinism of this period tugs in the opposite direction from the wider thesis secular historians have affirmed.  If they did, then, soften their theological views and ‘Arminianized’ in some manner, then it appears to have occurred during a time when others were becoming ‘Calvinized’” (p.10).

Please bear with me here, for I want to demonstrate the impression this article had on Bridges.  Again, Bridges informs us that

“They [that is, Separate Baptists] were the right people, with the right, sound doctrine, living at the right place, in the right time.  Truly, this is raw Calvinism...[Separate Baptists] were more emotional, less intellectual, less structured than their cerebral brethren, which is exactly what we would expect from Western North Carolinians of this era.  This also fits the description of Southern Puritanism of this period perfectly.” (pp.22, 23).

Notice again the title of Bridges’ paper “The Raw Calvinism of the North Carolina Separates...”

For Bridges, he possesses an airtight case that Separates were simply being what they were--Southern Puritans, “Raw Calvinists”--when they displayed such differing cultural idiosyncrasies than the Particular Baptists.  And even secular historians make the case for him.

Nevertheless, the numerous complications immediately under the surface are astounding.  Bridges is quoting in the passage above an entry entitled “Calvinism” in “The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture” written by Professor John H. Leith, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA.  Quoting secondary sources is a legitimate practice but surely must be carefully considered.  Unfortunately, Bridges was much too careless here. 

First, he wrongly identifies Fred Hobson and W. J. Cash as historians.  They were; but they were a special breed of historian.  Hobson was an English professor and Cash mainly a journalist. And, neither Cash nor Hobson were writing history as history from the sources Bridges quotes.  Rather they were writing a genre on the order of regional confession, a type of social literary commentary in the same style as William Faulkner, for example. 

“The Mind of the South” by Cash was definitively not history per se--surely not the way Bridges view demands.  In his book, Cash attempted to capture the soul of being culturally southern.  Bridges should have seen this. 

Leith wrote in the Encyclopedia article, just prior to quoting Cash: “Calvinism’s influence, however, has extended far beyond its importance as a formal theology.  It was one of the fundamental forces creating a distinctive character of the people of the region.”  Leith then quotes Cash as Bridges notes.  But even then, Bridges only quotes the part that allegedly fits his thesis.  For Professor Leith went on to say “Arminian free will surely also entered into the character of the region through the large Methodist influence, but the two combined in a peculiar cultural syntheses.”

Also, had Bridges been observant, he would have noticed Professor Leith’s careful quote of Hobson:  “Southern ‘Puritanism’ was vastly different from the New England variety...”  Hobson places Puritanism in quotation marks; Bridges does not.  Professor Leith was more cautious than Bridges.  And Bridges should have noticed.  It would have prevented him some embarrassment. For if one looks at Hobson, we find that he’s employing “Puritanism” as a cultural metaphor, not at all to be equated with either theological or moral Puritanism, and certainly not Bridges’ Calvinism (Tell About the South, Fred C. Hobson, 1983, p.263). 

Even more devastating for Bridges’ understanding, Hobson was actually arguing against Cash in his book!  Hobson writes

“Historically, Cash was off base in other particulars.  His view of Reconstruction has been invalidated by historians, his understanding of populism was flawed, he omitted the mind of the Negro in his analysis and wrote only of the white mind.  His understanding of Puritanism was faulty, distorted no doubt by too much reading of his mentor Mencken.” (Ibid).  

He goes on to note that “if Cash misunderstood Reconstruction and populism, so did many other scholars of the period...And if he insisted on calling Southern Calvinism ‘Puritanism’ so did William Faulkner in Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and other works.” (Ibid, p.264).

The point is simply this:  Bridges bases a major thrust in his paper relying on a source that he appears to totally misunderstand. Rather than see in the Encyclopedia article that Professor Leith was giving differing interpretations of southern culture’s soul, Bridges pulls the materials out and builds a house on sand.  He doesn’t understand Hobson was contra Cash. 

Nor does he bother to mention either the Methodist influence on southern culture or the third social interpreter Professor Leith mentions in his Encyclopedia article:  James McBride Dabbs.  I think I know why. 

According to Leith, Dabbs talked of southerners’ “spiritual pride of the God-selected Calvinist” combined  with the pride of “the imperial Englishman” to produce the white southerner.  Calvinist belief in human depravity, God’s sovereignty, and an ordained universe helped to condition southern enslavement of blacks.  Not too healthy a view for Calvinism,  I’d say.  No wonder Bridges kinda omitted that part. 

But omission did not salvage his view.  He completely botches this source.  Hence, Bridges’ entire thesis is jeopardized at this one juncture since he placed so much emphasis on a source he misunderstood. 

If we combine the above in Bridges’ paper with:

A) Numerous Presumptuous Statements.  Example:  “Some Particular Baptists may have arrived prior to the founding of Sandy Creek...” Bridges references “North Carolina Through Four Centuries” by William Powell (p.73).  Powell, however, only mentions Baptists, NOT Particular Baptists.  We know historically North Carolina was a strong center for General Baptist expansion.  Why then would Bridges assume the good Professor meant Particular Baptists?

B) Argumentative Statements with No Corresponding Evidences.  Example:  “No doubt, the Sandy Creek folks saw this practice [love feasts and fellowship meals], for the Moravians were a people known for their hospitality and willingness to share their community with visitors.” (p.20). 

Here Bridges suggests Separates got many of their cultural traits from the surrounding communities in North Carolina.  Yet, he offers no documentation how either Moravians or other immigrant neighbors communicated with those outside their clan.  Moravians continued to speak German as did the Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland, Gaelic (Powell, pp.106 ff).  Not to mention the naive suggestion that Separate Baptists were merely products of their culture.  To the contrary, Separates also created a culture!

C) Statements That Go Against Standard Works.  Example:  “In the past, Baptist historians have either claimed ignorance about the origin of Separate-Regular differences, particularly the nine rites, or simply engaged in ad hoc theological theorizing about Separates’ “moderate Calvinism.”  Purefoy, Benedict, Armitage, McBeth and Paschal all speak of the nine rites of Separate Baptists and the most common reason offered is they took the Scripture literally.  Bridges makes statements like this over again that just simply does not fit the record. 

Wrapping it up, Bridges writes:  “This admittedly mundane solution fits the available evidence” (p.23). For me, I don’t know how to respond any further.  This has been one of the most frustrating pieces I’ve ever tried to make sense of.  But I simply cannot sit back while someone disses all other views but one’s own, placing them into “orphaned assertions bereft of and contrary to the evidence.” 

In the end, I have relearned one valuable lesson and I beg you to relearn it too:  Check the footnotes, darling.  From my view, this paper needs to be retracted.  With that, I am...

Peter

Comments

[volfan007]

uuhh, peter, could you repeat all that again for me? lol.

very good. very clear. thanks.

also, about the tn baptist tradition. what was that? can you explain to me what they were all about? i would be interested in hearing about them.

david

[Joe]

Peter,

There is a difference between poking a yellow-jacket nest with a 50' pole, and squeezing the nest with your hands. Great scholarly post!

Have fun :)

[Michael Westmoreland-White]

Peter, that is a truly devastating review. It shows how desperate the Founders types are to "read out" of Baptist life all that isn't 5-point scholastic Calvinism.

And views like this say nothing, as one of your authors notes, about African-American Baptists in the South.

[peter]

Dear Brother David,

Thanks always. I know it was a long one. As for The Tennessee Church tradition, I think if you just recall good old J.R., you may be headed down the right path :)

The unity we have held over time is miraculous given our diversity as Baptist believers.

Grace. With that, I am...

Peter

[peter]

Dear Joe,

You will be sorry you stung me so bad. With that, I am...

Peter

[peter]

Michael,

What's even worse, Michael, is I possibly had enough "stuff" to post again! It really is that bad.

And, of course, you are right about our ignoring the African-American mind and mores in the South.

Peace. With that, I am...

Peter

[selahV]

PETER: I'm so refreshed now, I could blog all night! :) selahV

[volfan007]

j.r.??

ewing?

j.r. graves?

john r. rice?

peter, who are you talking about?

david

[peter]

Dear David,

Sorry for not getting back sooner. Also I thought you'd guess my "JR' was Graves.

Though his influence in Landmark thinking was more post-1845, I feel sure that Shurden is speaking of the Tennessee tradition as involving in some important ways, Landmarkism because of its prevalence there even before the SBC. I may be imprecise here since I'm only going from memory and at my age, senility comes in spurts:)

I have not read Shurden that much. Two or three books and some papers in Baptist Heritage & History, none of which I recall spells out in detail The Barnes Lectures (1980) Bridges mentions and Humphreys follows.

Nevertheless, Baptist History studies has surely been shaped significantly over the past quarter century by Shurden.

The quote I alluded to was from Fisher Humphreys' book, "The Way We Were." I have read much of Humphreys' works. Indeed he was my systematic theology professor at NOBTS. I learned more about Calvinism from him I suppose than any other one person.

Humphreys had an incredible gift of fairness to those views with which he disagreed. I would like to think a fraction of his spirit of fairness I have embraced myself.

For Humphreys, it does not matter your "theological" or "political" stripe; he is one cool cat when it comes to dialog. Though we disagreed many times--and still do--I never once felt from him a sense of superiority or his view was definitively right and mine wrong, and that even as a student. Rather through a series of engaging questions, he drew me so many times to understand not his position but MINE even better.

Have a great afternoon, my brother David. With that, I am...

Peter

[volfan007]

peter,

thanks. j.r. graves truly left his mark on tn baptists.

david

[Michael Westmoreland-White]

Yes, and some of us are STILL trying to get rid of that mark that Graves left on Baptists. Landmarkism is so bad it makes me really appreciate Calvinism!

[selahV]

Peter: your posts are not dark, nor are they dreary. I've learned alot by reading your blog. I've saved the money of investing in a book which will not edify, challenge nor change me. You've helped with that and I for one, am grateful.

Am looking forward to some of your new ideas and thought-filled posts as soon as you get over your bee stings. Have a great weekend. selahV