Over troubled waters: Baptist preachers who were bridge builders.

In his November 2004 report to the General Board of the American Baptist Churches, USA, A. Roy Medley, the general secretary of the denomination, spoke of "A Bridge People in a World of Wall-Builders." He called American Baptists to be bridge builders instead of wall builders, people who are dedicated to finding ways to bridge the gap in an increasingly polarized society. (1)

As a pastor who is also an historian, I often think of those Baptist preachers who did exactly what Medley was asking American Baptists to do, Baptists who were not afraid to bridge the gap between opposing sides of contentious issues, who could see beyond the horizon of whatever pushed Baptists into separate corners. I wish I could sit down and speak with some of them today. They would surely have a good word to say in a time when Baptist life is very polarized. Their ministry became the bridge over which communication between two opposing sides could take place. Their lives became places of grace.

Few regions of the country could claim stronger representatives of the two opposing traditions known as Regular and Separate Baptists than can South Carolina. The First Baptist Church of Charleston, along with the Charleston Association, could be considered the epitome of the movement known as Regular Baptists; and the rural churches of the Sandy Creek Association and, after 1771, the Congaree Association were the epitome of the Separate Baptists. We should never downplay the differences in their worship styles. We are still struggling with them today.

But somehow the two groups of Baptists merged after 1773. How did this happen? After all, when Daniel Marshall and a delegation from the rural churches attended a meeting of the Charleston Association in 1773, the Charleston crowd, in a typical liberal gesture, proposed terms of official union which would allow the various churches wide differences in what they called "their peculiarities," but the delegates from the Separate Baptists refused such a gesture, insisting that the Regulars must come fully to their views. Here was the classic liberal/conservative divide, and the gap between the two groups seemed enormous.

The way that divide was finally crossed was not by floor debates or resolutions or official votes for union. The gap was finally crossed because Baptists like Oliver Hart, Edmund Botsford, and Evan Pugh reached out in friendship to Separates like Daniel Marshall, Joseph Reese, and others. These Regular Baptists were more tenacious in their friendship than they were in their theology; or, perhaps I should say that friendship was a deeper theology than their worship styles. Regardless, the two groups eventually merged without formal action. Sometimes quiet friendship can bridge differences better than formal actions.

Hart's influence seems to me to be even greater as a result of his friendships than from his preaching or his official theological positions. He had a knack for taking young people with promise under his wings and preparing them for ministry. Over his thirty-year pastorate, we can see this happen again and again, so that it is no accident that he became known as "Father Hart." Baptists did not hesitate to call certain ministers "Father," but it was a title that had to be earned. Hart himself called these ministers whom he had nurtured "the Seals of my Ministry, my Joy & Crown." (2)

Among those "seals" of his ministry were people like Francis Pelot, who served as pastor of the Euhaw church until his death in 1774, when Hart wrote in his diary, "I have lost the best friend and counselor I ever was blest with in the world; the most intimate friendship had existed betwixt us for about four and twenty years." (3) Consider also the friendship of Hart with Edmund Botsford, who was converted under Hart's preaching and encouraged toward the ministry until he eventually served the New Savannah church in Georgia, which later came to be known as Botsford's Old Meetinghouse. After the Revolutionary War, Botsford served as pastor at Welsh Neck and Georgetown.

The list of people influenced by the sheer force of his friendship could grow long, but I think especially of Samuel Stillman and Richard Furman. Stillman became the esteemed (even famous) pastor of the First Baptist Church in Boston. Furman succeeded Hart as pastor of the Charleston church, but interestingly, Furman would never have been expected to be a Regular Baptist in a city church. He was not groomed for that role. He was never formally educated, but learned the trade of surveying from his father. He was also an accomplished farmer and hunter.

Furman was converted at the High Hills church under the preaching of Joseph Reese and the influence of the Separate Baptists. When Hart met Furman in 1773, Furman was only eighteen years old, but a friendship developed between the country boy and city pastor that influenced Furman for a lifetime. He was nurtured by Hart's friendship until finally he himself developed the gift, as he described Hart's preaching, of speaking eloquently to persons of true taste, and edification to the serious hearer. (4) That, I think, was Furman's way of describing the difference between Regular and Separate Baptists!

With Oliver Hart's example of bridging differences with friendship, Furman followed in his footsteps. Mercer University in Georgia would never have existed without Furman's gift of friendship. Silas Mercer of Georgia was a crusty old Baptist who was part of the school of thought that believed that if God called a person into the ministry, then God would give that person the gifts for ministry. That belief, of course, excluded any need of or use for theological education. But along came his friend Richard Furman to talk to Mercer about the efforts of the Charleston Association to help young ministers obtain a formal education.

Whenever you are in the midst of a church's pledge campaign, take a lesson from Furman. He went to Mercer's home for a visit--he did not just preach to him. He met with Mercer alone, and no one knows exactly what Furman said, but at the end of the meeting, this crusty old enemy of formal theological education had been converted. Mercer came out of that meeting with Furman wholeheartedly in favor of establishing a scholarship fund for "pious young men" to study for the ministry. I do not think it was a coincidence that one year later the first recipient of a scholarship from that fund was,none other than Silas Mercer's son Jesse. And what a great influence for good was exerted by the ministry of Jesse Mercer in Georgia, both in his lifetime and through the influence of the university that bears his name. All of this came about because of the extraordinary gift of persuasion through the friendship of Richard Furman.

Consider also Furman's friendship with William Staughton, who eventually became the leading Baptist in Philadelphia. Originally, Staughton came to this country from England because Furman sent an urgent request to the English Baptists to send a young minister to serve the newly formed church at Georgetown, South Carolina. When Staughton arrived in 1793, he soon developed a strong and lasting friendship with Furman. Staughton soon discovered that he needed a cooler climate and moved north, where he eventually became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, and later the Sansom Street church in the same city.

Now consider the Baptist leadership in the three great cities of the eastern seaboard in the late eighteenth century: Richard Furman in Charleston, William Staughton in Philadelphia, and Samuel Stillman in Boston. All three were tied by deep friendship. It should come as no surprise that when the first national organization of Baptists was formed in Philadelphia in 1814, the delegates begged Furman to attend. His friendship, even more than his preaching or theology, was the tie that bound them. His decision to attend the first meeting of the Triennial Convention was no light matter. The seas were not safe because of the war with England again, so Furman had to travel overland. The church in Charleston sensed the importance of the meeting and gave him a six-month leave of absence.

Furman's arrival for the meeting was cause for great anxiety, but on the day before the meeting began, he arrived. His presence inspired the gathering, and he was unanimously elected the first president of the Triennial Convention. His broad and liberal friendship is what elicited respect and trust among the churches represented in that meeting. Furman was truly the George Washington of Baptists. If that comparison is valid, then the First Baptist Church of Charleston is the Baptist Mount Vernon, and it should be cared for and treasured as such.

For thirty years the Triennial Convention, as they called it, unified Baptist witness, but the tragedy of sectionalism leading to the Civil War broke that harmony and divided the convention. Harsh words were spoken both by Northerners and Southerners. Yet those friendships were like family ties. Just as brother fought against brother in that war, Baptists could not forget the ties they held between North and South. Two of those Baptists whose hearts were wrenched during that tragic period in our history were Francis Wayland in the North and Richard Fuller in the South. Wayland was president of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Fuller was a son of South Carolina, the scion of a wealthy plantation family in Beaufort, and the inheritor of hundreds of slaves.

I wish every Baptist could read the series of letters between Wayland and Fuller which were published in 1856 under the title Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution. (5) No one today would dispute the issue: Fuller was wrong and Wayland was right. What is significant in that book is the truly extraordinary degree to which these two friends on opposing sides of an explosive issue could relate to one another. Wayland began the correspondence with this statement: "Should I utter a word that would tend needlessly to wound the feelings of my Southern brethren, there is not one of them that will be as deeply pained as myself." Fuller expressed the same sentiment, and they proved it in their series of eight published letters in which they stated their positions.

Fuller was a picture of ambiguity regarding slavery. Although he had inherited slaves, he did not believe that slavery was right or good. For a time, he advocated the movement to colonize Liberia with former slaves. When war eventually broke out, Fuller was in an impossible position. He was a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, but he was also pastor of a church in Baltimore, a border state that did not secede. Although a Southern Baptist leader, Fuller continued his allegiance to the Union throughout the war.

After the war, Fuller was one of those Baptist leaders who saved the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In 1872, he was invited to speak in behalf of the seminary at a convention of northern Baptists meeting in Washington, D.C. Once again, friendship saved the day. Baptists in the North knew Fuller. He spoke of the struggle of the seminary to stay alive, and he spoke of his pleasant memories of the old Triennial Convention and pleaded for the good fellowship of the past. He described the crippled condition of the seminary in Greenville, and when he asked for their support, pledge followed pledge until $10,000 in pledges was received. James P. Boyce, Southern's president, would later say that those northern Baptists paid their pledges. "It is a way they have," he said, "to pay pledges they make in public meetings." (6)

I will close with a story that Fuller was fond of telling about William Jay, the famous American philanthropist. One evening Jay took a walk around Washington, even though the city was shrouded in a dense fog. He was on his way home, when he saw a huge and monstrous object approaching him on the sidewalk. As it drew nearer in the fog, the object turned out to be the shape of a gigantic, menacing-looking man. Jay was terrified in the fog, but when he got closer to the man, he discovered that it was none other than his own brother John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Sometimes, while walking in the darkness and fog of our own days, it takes great courage to get close enough to recognize other Baptists as part of the family. Great chasms have been forged between opposing sides. The times call for leaders who are bridge builders instead of wall builders.

(1.) See the full text of Medley's sermon, "A Bridge People in a World of Wall-Builders," at the American Baptist Churches, USA web site: www.abcusa.org. (accessed April 11, 2005)

(2.) Quoted in Robert A. Baker and Paul J. Craven, Jr., Adventure in Faith, the First 300 Years of the First Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1982), 157.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) Richard Furman, in William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. 6 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1860), 49.

(5.) Richard Fuller, Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (New York: Sheldon, Lamport and Blakeman, 1856).

(6.) William A. Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1959), 41.

Thomas R. McKibbens, Jr., is pastor of First Baptist Church, Worcester, Massachusetts.