I should have closed this series a while back. However, too many irons which require some heat pushed closure for this issue well past the deadline. In fact, it is so far past, it almost is useless now to think we can pick up where we left off without a serious retooling of the argument that “Reformed Baptist” is an oxymoron, an argument which began here and continued here and here.
Nonetheless, I owe at least a closing thought, and a closing thought is what you’ll get.
I’ve offered a partial critique of those Southern Baptists—represented by Baptist historian, Nathan Finn—who find “Reformed Baptist” to be a positive moniker for use today. Albeit Finn had some reservations about some usages, he nevertheless included himself in employing the term “Reformed Baptist” to describe his own position. If interested, one may reconsider the critique I offered in the first three parts which raised questions concerning Finn’s self-inconsistency in employing the term (see links above).
What no one from the Southern Baptist community who advocates the viable usage of “Reformed Baptist” appears to have addressed is the historic usage of “Reformed Baptist” among Baptists of the south. Finn only suggested that “Reformed Baptist” goes back but a mere generation: “So at the level of self-identification at least, there absolutely are Reformed Baptists—indeed, entire associations and networks of them. This has been the case since at least the 1960s.” As an historian, Finn should know better than this; that is, that "Reformed Baptist" possesses a much richer history than a single generation. Indeed one must assume he does. Why he failed to go beyond the 1960s is inexplicable.
The fact remains, however, at least twice among Baptists in the south, “Reformed Baptist” has been employed as a moniker to describe movements within Baptist ranks. By movements I mean communities of Baptists who thought alike, similar to Finn’s taxonomy of “Reformed” communities among Southern Baptists today. I mention but one of the two movements.*
Chronologically, the first time “Reformed Baptist” was employed as a serious identification of who Baptists were and ought to be was on the second quarter threshold of the 19th century.** Ironically, “Reformed Baptists” was the originally chosen name of the Anti-missionary Baptists who broke away from Baptists in the south beginning in 1826 with the Kehukee Association of North Carolina.
In Baptist historian, Robert Baker’s “A Baptist Source Book,” is recorded the details of the historic meeting held in August, 1826. Quoting an 1854 source, Baker begins:
A paper purporting to be a declaration of the Reformed Baptists in North Carolina, dated 26th August, 1826, which was presented at last Association and referred to the churches to express in their letters to this Association their views with regard to it, came up for deliberation…(p.137, bold mine)
A number of other historians make much of this defining moment including George Purefoy (History of Sandy Creek, 1858, p.32), G.W. Paschal (History of North Carolina Baptists, Vol 2, 1955 p. 399), and C. Biggs Hassell (History of the Church of God, 1886 p. 787-9). The latter historian is considered the definitive historical reference for the official history of today’s Primitive Baptist Church.
Hassell records the historic moment when the “Declaration of the Reformed Baptist Churches of
North Carolina” was brought before the Kehukee Association:
This session of the Association was one of the most remarkable ever held by her… Never perhaps in the whole period of her existence, either before or since that time, did such a melting scene occur in a session of the Kehukee Association as did then. All present seemed to be fired with love for each other, and thankfulness to God that He had conducted the controversy to such a happy issue…It was a noble stand taken by the Kehukee Association… This was the first and great decisive stand taken by the Baptists on American soil against worldly institutions, as being necessary for the propagation of the gospel and the salvation of men… This example of the Kehukee Association, then sixty-two years old, was encouraging to other similar bodies; and from 1827 to 1840 there was a stir among churches and Associations all over the land, and many followed the example of old Mother Kehukee” (pp.787-9)
Hassell goes on to mention another meeting in 1826 by the Little River Association (Raleigh, NC area) which called their associational meeting “The Reformed Baptist Conference” (p.975). Following in the wake of “Mother Kehukee,” they too were styled “Reformed Baptists.” And, while the self-styled label lasted only briefly before settling on “Primitive Baptists” approximately two years later, “Reformed Baptists” is the obvious historic birthright of anti-missionary forces among Baptists in the south.
Hence, why any Southern Baptist today would desire the historic identifying label of a group of Baptists who were and still are theologically Hyper-Calvinistic is beyond common sense. The irony could not be more striking. On the one hand, Calvinistic Southern Baptists represented by Professor Finn grieve what they believe is unfair criticism from Non-Calvinists toward “Reformed” Baptists for subtly encouraging anti-evangelism. On the other hand, Dr. Finn finds it desirable to be known by an historic position which literally birthed institutionalized anti-evangelism among southern Baptists—“The Reformed Baptists.”
From my perspective, the “Reformed” among us should be the last ones to desire such an unbecoming blotch of Baptist life with which to identify.
With that, I am…
Peter
*The Disciples Movement in the latter 19th Century led by Alexander Campbell was also originally dubbed, “Reformed Baptists.” Campbell himself did not like the label and rejected it.
**There appears to be a few scattered individual congregations prior to 1825 named “the Reformed Baptist church” but no movement to embrace the moniker, “Reformed Baptists,” among associations (cp. A History of Kentucky Baptists, Vol 1, J.H. Spencer,1885, p. 67)
Comments