A Baptist History Question

Jason, here is some of that with which I am familiar. This is following the southern line of Regular Baptists after the missionary split of 1820-40 and the north/south split of 1845.

First schism of any consequence seems to be the Gospel Mission schism, circa 1890. I'm not sure of how many churches actually left the SBC, but Gospel Missions at least paved the way for later schisms. Most of this centered around the mission methods of missionary to China Tarleton Perry Crawford, and an attempt of he and his followers to promote a change in SBC mission methods. I have seen some local Baptist associations on into the 1910's and later that allowed both Mission Board reports and Gospel Mission reports.

I would add that unrest over the positions of seminarians Crawford Toy (circa 1880) and William H. Whitsitt (circa 1895) provide part of the setting for SBC problems.

The first major division within the southern churches occurred in Texas. Several years of dissension led up to this. The Baptist Missionary Association of Texas was organized in 1900. This was a landmark influenced controversy, but the BMAT seems to have not been as influenced by Gospel Missions as the later division in Arkansas. The chief antagonist against the BGCT, Elder Samuel A. Hayden, was said to have been against withdrawing from the convention. I think many people have failed to realize the scale of this division. Many major leaders and large churches of the BGCT left and went to the BMA. The BMAT evidently had about as many churches a few years after its organization as it has now. Internal dissension, as well as efforts used by the BGCT to get churches and preachers back, may have kept this from outgrowing the BGCT. But that is just an opinion.

Several other divisions occurred in the south about this time. The next of any large scale would be in Arkansas. Landmark/gospel missioners asked for several concessions in policy and method on the part of the State Convention. The Convention did not accept the proposals and a fairly large group of Arkansas churches formed the State Association of Missionary Baptist Churches of Arkansas in 1902. As late as 1924, the SBC was still listing these "Landmark" churches in their annual (but not because they were cooperating).

In the first quarter of the 20th century, several other smaller divisions occurred and associations were organized on a state level: Mississippi (1908), Oklahoma (1903,1920,merged 1925), Florida (1920), Louisiana (1924), Georgia (1925), Alabama (1927), Missouri (1928), California (1933), and Tennessee-Carolina (1938). All of these are still in existence except Tennesse-Carolina (and Georgia died and was reorganized). In 1905, several Landmark Baptists, mostly from Arkansas, organized a General Association of Missionary Baptists for the purpose of carrying on foreign mission work separate from the SBC. The BMAT had their own foreign mission work and most Texas churches did not participate. An unification movement began to try to bring these scattered missionary Baptist churches under one mission umbrella. The result of that effort was the organization of the American Baptist Association in 1924. Technically, the ABA is a successor to the old General Association, but is not the same association. The General Association actually traveled under several names in its 20 year history, but it is commonly referred to as "The Old General Association."

The American Baptist Association had several problems and controversies that occurred beginning circa late 1930's. The final result was division in 1949-50. Two new assocations came about as a result of this division: the North American Baptist Association (now Baptist Missionary Association of America), and the Interstate and Foreign Missionary Baptist Associational Assembly of America (now Interstate and Foreign Landmark Missionary Baptist Association of America). Another result of the ABA split was churches leaving associations and remaining independent.

There are several other considerations. One might be called "silent splits." These are the local associations and churches that had nominal cooperation with the SBC and dropped out in the first half of the 20th century. There are probably about 20 such association scattered in Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi. Another would be the fundamentalist movement that produced the World Baptist Fellowship, Orthodox Baptist Fellowship, and other independent Baptist fellowships. This is related to, but different from, the Landmark divisions. Fundamentalist J. Frank Norris (TX) and Landmarker Ben M. Bogard (AR) moved in some of the same circles in the 30's. The Orthodox Fellowship (led by such men as L. S. Ballard & W. Lee Rector) was more thoroughly landmark than Norris' WBF. Then there are things like the Kelleyite Division, which is a separation which leaves little on the radar screen and is usually only known to people in the affected geographical area, and Martinism, which caused division but evidently left no permanent division that is noticable among Baptists. Perhaps they just went back into the fold. You are in the general area of the Martin controversy; Does any of that doctrinal idea sound familiar to you?

[ January 06, 2003, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: rlvaughn ]

 

I shall look into that Martinism.....especially since it is my wife's maiden name
JLS

 

Still have a little of that among us but, we have so few really studied men who care to deal with doctrine like that....it, sadly, makes little difference here....
JLS

 

By the way, I wasn't aware of the name change with the Interstate and Foreign Lanmark Baptist Associaton of America..... can you document this for me? I've never seen anything with that name on it and I have some of our minutes that go back to the 50's.
BTW, much schism here due to moral discipline and personalities of preachers......don't know how long we'll remain as we are. There is already a split between local associations. I don't know how we can fellowship at National/International level if we can't at a State/Local level.
Enough of that, though.......JLS fades back into obscurity and lurking...

 

Jason, I have the 1951 (photocopy) & 1952 (original) minutes, and that is the name on the cover and the official name in Article 14 of the objects and powers. My collection then skips to 1960 minutes, which has the present name.

 

Thanks RLV, I'll have to see if I can find one an look at it again.
We were over in your neck of the woods in Oct. and preached at Faithway. Had a good time, though there were only a few.
JLS