The origins of the Southern Baptist Convention: a historiographical study: the purpose of this paper is to describe how white Baptist church historians of the South have interpreted the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention since 1845.

It is, therefore, an exercise in historiography. Most non-Southern Baptist church historians would doubtless ask, "Is it not obvious that slavery was the decisive factor in the formation of the SBC?" The answer: "No, it has not been obvious to white Southern Baptist church historians that slavery was the primary issue in the formation of the SBC." Indeed, not until the last quarter of the twentieth century have these Baptist historians said without qualification that slavery was the fundamental cause of the SBC.

This investigation is limited to white Baptist church historians of the South in order to demonstrate changing patterns of interpretation by this group since 1845. One could easily broaden this research, and with great profit, by adding the interpretations of African American Baptist church historians, white Baptist church historians of the North, and secular historians of all kinds. But that is a more extensive and comprehensive work, waiting probably on the careful and diligent hand of some energetic Ph.D. student in search of an excellent dissertation topic.

We have taken a "somewhat strict" chronological approach, though the reader will see, and for obvious reasons we hope, some elasticity in the chronology. For the 155-year history of the SBC, three patterns of interpretation emerged, each relating generally to a fifty-year period.

During the first period of 1845-1900, white Baptist denominational historians of the South wrote defensively about the formation of the SBC, ignoring slavery as the causative factor in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. They rarely mentioned the word slavery, much less pointed to it as the primary cause of the SBC.

From 1900 to 1950, historians clearly identified slavery as a factor in the formation of the SBC, but some tended to obscure its impact by pointing to, sometimes even highlighting, other factors.

In the last half of the twentieth century, 1950-2000, Southern Baptist church historians have been more blunt in identifying slavery as the causative factor in the formation of the SBC.

The facts of the division between Baptists north and south are an oft-told story and need not be repeated here. While the facts are generally undisputed, the interpretation of those facts has been greatly debated. Under the leadership of Luther Rice in 1814, Baptists organized their foreign mission society known as the Triennial Convention.

In 1832, the denomination formed the American Baptist Home Mission Society. In the 1840s, in an effort to avoid division, the societies adopted resolutions of neutrality regarding the slavery issue. Partisan sentiments on such a momentous issue, however, simply could not be suppressed.

The schism occurred, therefore, among Baptists in the mid-nineteenth century in their national mission societies. As Robert A. Baker said, "The pertinent question in each case was, will the Society appoint a slaveholder as missionary?" (1) By 1845, Baptists of the South believed, and with good reason, that the answer to that question was no. They, therefore, assembled at Augusta, Georgia, in May 1845 to form a new convention, not, according to them, because of slavery but because their "rights" had been violated.

Slavery: An Ignored Factor, 1845-1900

Four major historical interpretations of the origins of the SBC appeared during the first fifty years of the convention. These documents came from William B. Johnson (1845), William Williams (1871), Lansing Burrows (1881), and William H. Whitsitt (1895). These four essays contained several common features. The most important of the documents, in terms of Southern Baptist origins, was Johnson's.

William 13. Johnson, 1845

White Baptists of the South gave their earliest and most official statement of the reasons for the formation of the SBC at the organizational meeting of the SBC in 1845. This document, awkwardly titled: "The Southern Baptist Convention, To the Brethren in the United States; to the congregations connected with the respective Churches; and to all candid men," is referred to, thankfully, as the "Address to the Public." (2) While the SBC charged a committee with the responsibility of writing the document, most historians have assumed that W. B. Johnson had a major hand in the document. His name was attached to the document in the 1845 SBC Annual. If not the most influential Baptist of the South in the mid-nineteenth century, W. B. Johnson was surely one of the two or three most significant Southern Baptist statesmen of the era. Elected as the first SBC president and author of the convention's most important founding documents, Johnson also served as president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention in 1845. Moreover, he was the only person at the 1845 SBC meeting also present at the formation of the Triennial Convention in 1814. He had served on the committee to draw up the constitution of the Triennial Convention, and he had served as president of the Triennial Convention in 1841-44. Johnson declined to serve as president of the Triennial Convention in 1844 at the apex of the slavery controversy, allegedly for "health" reasons. (3) He was not too sick the next year to take the leadership of the SBC, however.

The opening sentence of the "Address to the Public" described both the deep trauma and the limited scope of the denominational schism: "A painful division has taken place in the missionary operations of the American Baptists." (4) The separation hurt, but it related only to foreign and home missions. Johnson, concerned with maintaining as many Northern Baptist ties as possible, underscored that "the extent of this disunion" should not be exaggerated. Anticipating correctly that the schism could become more extensive in the future, he nonetheless said that "at the present time" it involves only the foreign and domestic missions of the denomination.

A popular but erroneous interpretation among some Southern Baptists in the twentieth century has been that Baptists divided in 1845 over theological issues. The usual version of this interpretation argued that the split occurred because Northern Baptists were theological "liberals," while Southern Baptists were theological "conservatives." In his public explanation Johnson stated unequivocally that this was not the case. Said Johnson:

      Northern and southern Baptists are still brethren. They differ in no
   article of the faith. They are guided by the same principles of gospel
   order.... We do not regard the rupture as extending to foundation
   principles, nor can we think that the great body of our Northern brethren
   will so regard it. (5)

While the denominational divorce was rooted neither in theological differences nor in differences regarding basic Baptist principles, the separation had proceeded, said Johnson "deplorably far."

So how did Johnson, the first president of the SBC, interpret the division between Baptists north and south? He began by insisting that the "entire origin" of the division "is with others." (6) Authority had been "usurped," a covenant of trust had been breached, an "autocratical interdict" had been imposed, and all of this had come from the Baptists of the North. Southern Baptists wanted the public to know that while Baptists of the South had created a new convention they had done so only in response to the actions of others. The initiative and the cause of the division lay with "others," namely, Northern Baptists.

In the "Address" one can identify three reasons for the formation of the SBC. One was constitutional, the second was historical, and the third was missional.

First, and most importantly, Johnson believed the new convention was necessary because Northern Baptists violated the constitutions of the Baptist mission societies. For Johnson and the Baptists at Augusta, Southern Baptists organized the SBC because of constitutional usurpation by extreme antislavery advocates, not because of slavery. From the beginning oft he Triennial Convention in 1814, said Johnson, its constitution had known "no difference between slaveholders and non-slaveholders." (7) In this historical observation, Johnson and the southerners were correct, as northerners themselves acknowledged. (8) "But an evil hour arrived," according to Johnson. This "evil hour," however, was not the practice and defense of slavery, but an hour when passionate voices injected the issue of slavery as a moral issue into the deliberations of Baptists' missionary operations. Johnson insisted that the constitutions

of the mission societies never forbade the appointment of slaveholders as missionaries. According to Baptists in the South, therefore, the constitutional issue of refusing to appoint slaveholders led to the formation of the SBC, not slavery.

Second, Johnson argued that Baptists of the South formed the SBC because some Northern Baptists, by their recent antislavery actions, had ignored Baptist history. From 1814 till 1844, slaveholders, said Johnson, had worked side by side with nonslaveholders in the Triennial Convention and with "no breath of discord between them." (9) Additionally, Johnson asserted, and again correctly, that the mission societies of Baptists had adopted explicit resolutions of neutrality on the slavery issue, affirming that their sole purpose was the propagation of the gospel. (10) In forming the SBC, therefore, Southern Baptists were practicing what Baptists in America had always practiced; they were following "the old paths." With the organization of the SBC, Baptists of the South proposed "to do the Lord's work in the way [their] fathers did it," (11) by refusing to admit slavery as an issue into the Baptist missionary enterprise.

Third, Johnson said southerners organized the SBC because northerners "would forbid us to speak unto the Gentiles." He meant that he and others formed the SBC in order to fulfill their missionary responsibility. Johnson interpreted the antislavery actions of the Baptist mission societies as laying "a kind of Romish interdict upon us in the discharge of an imperative duty." By excluding slaveholders as missionary appointees, northerners had monopolized the gospel, said Johnson. Such an "Autocratical Interdict of the North would first drive us from our beloved colored people ... and from the much-wronged Aborigines of the country ... and cut us off from the whitening fields of the heathen harvest-labor." Therefore, the purpose for the SBC was "the extension of the Messiah's kingdom, and the glory of our God." Disunion with the North was not the design. Nor was "the upholding of any form of human policy or civil rights" the purpose of the new convention. The SBC was formed "for the profit of these poor, perishing and precious souls." (12)

In summary, Southern Baptists organized the SBC, according to Johnson, because Northerners violated the constitutions of the two mission agencies, ignored the cooperative missionary history of Baptists in America--even repudiating official actions of neutrality--and denied Baptists of the South a means through which to fulfill their missionary responsibility. (13)

William Williams, 1871

William Williams, a church historian and the least known of the first four (14) faculty members of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina, preached the annual sermon in 1871 at the Southern Baptist Convention in Saint Louis. By request of the SBC, the sermon appeared as "Appendix D" in the 1872 SBC Annual. Whether by Williams or the editors of the annual, someone uncreatively titled the sermon "Historical Sketch, Contained in the Annual Sermon." Very much as Johnson's "Address," Williams's "Historical Sketch" served as an apologia for the organization of the SBC in 1845. In addition, however, Williams utilized their past to exhort Southern Baptists of the 1870s to rally in support of their own weakened denominational institutions. (15)

In his annual sermon, Williams, while using different language, underscored the three major points Johnson had stressed thirty years earlier. As Johnson had done, Williams came down hardest on the constitutional issue, claiming that the Northern Baptists forced the separation by the "infringement" of southern rights. In one sentence, he combined Johnson's constitutional and historical arguments:

   The constitution of the Triennial Convention, as well as the history of its
   proceedings from the beginning, conferred on all the members of the Baptist
   denomination in good standing, whether at the North or the South,
   eligibility to all appointments emanating from the Convention or the Board.
   (16)

Williams was making the point, so crucial to the southern rationale, that neither constitutional statute nor historical practice had precluded slaveholders from serving in the missionary societies prior to 1844. Williams also echoed Johnson's missional point. Southerners created the SBC because the Triennial Convention had "cut off southern ministers from the privilege of spreading the Gospel to the heathen." (17)

While following closely Johnson's explanations for the SBC, Williams introduced emphases of his own. In addition to the constitutional, historical, and missional reasons for the SBC, Williams injected what he saw as a moral reason for Southerners to create the SBC. Ironically, it was an argument of equality! Northerners, by excluding slaveholders, had denied the moral equality of Southern Baptists. The Home Mission Society by its antislavery actions, said Williams, had declared "an unwillingness to work together with them [slaveholders] upon terms of Christian equality." (18)

Williams's moral argument certainly must be Exhibit A of the blinding force of culture on conscience! Miffed at having equality snatched from him, Williams, as most Americans of his time, never thought of equality as an issue between the races.

Besides his moral argument, Williams made at least three other points. One, he spoke of the inevitability of the schism, a point made often by Baptists north and south during the 1840s.

Two, Williams gladly quoted at length from a Northern Baptist newspaper of April 1845 which argued that the division would aid the cause of missions by causing both groups to double their efforts. Many seized upon this argument to justify the slavery schism.

Three, while the biblical sanction of slavery played only a small part in the rationale and defense of the formation of the SBC, it was certainly present in the nineteenth-century documents. After the Home Mission Society voted to appoint only slaveholders, Williams said, "Of course, therefore, only those can consistently work with it and under its appointment, who recognize the Scriptural propriety of such a restriction." (19)

J. Lansing Burrows, 1885

The SBC celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 1885 by returning to the First Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, the place of its birth. J. Lansing Burrows, (20) easily confused with his son Lansing Burrows, presented a "Historical Sketch of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1885." Burrows referred to Johnson's "Address to the Public," two articles published in Christian Review magazine in 1845 and 18467 and William Williams's 1871 convention address as documents presenting "the essential facts relating to the causes and principles involved in the [1845] division, and must ever be the principal documents upon which these events are to be woven into the history of the denomination." (22)

Because Burrows thought the historical issues which led to the formation of the SBC had been adequately treated, he made only a passing comment regarding the origins of the denomination. As a result, he devoted his "Historical Sketch" to a brief history of the missionary work of the SBC. Burrows's passing comment regarding SBC origins, however, though brief, was significant. It added a bit more balance to the subject than had been presented by either Johnson or Williams.

Burrows spoke of how Northern Baptists and Southern Baptists viewed each other as "sinners" during the days of division. "Some of the Northern brethren," he said, "moved by the then recent agitation of the slavery question, gained new light as to the essential sinfulness of slavery, came to regard Southern Baptists as sinners in countenancing that institution, and concluded that the original terms of fellowship in missionary operations could not be consistently perpetuated." On the other hand, "Southern Baptists came to regard Northern Baptists as sinners because of the repudiation of the compact of the Constitution, under whose provisions they had worked together for more than a quarter of a century." (23)

While Burrows made the point that each side considered the other as sinful, he clearly leaned toward the "constitutional" argument so treasured by Southern Baptists. Not once but three times in a brief space, he noted that the two groups had worked together harmoniously under the constitution of the Triennial Convention for thirty years. Not only so, but he repeated the theme so important to Johnson and Williams that the SBC constitution was "essentially the same" as that under which Baptists had previously united.

That Burrows embraced the southern rationale should come as no surprise, for he had served historic Southern Baptist pulpits for over thirty-five years. Those churches included First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia; Broadway Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky; and Freemason Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia. Yet, Burrows was a northerner! Born in Albany, New York, educated at Andover Seminary, ordained in Poughkeepsie, New York, he served as pastor of significant Baptist churches in Pennsylvania before going south. His long stint of ministerial service in the South had "southernized" Burrows, but his northern roots may have caused him to want to spread the "sin" to both regions when he wrote his brief account of the origins of the SBC.

W. H. Whitsitt, 1895

In 1895, W. H. Whitsitt, the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, delivered a historical address at the jubilee meeting of the SBC in Washington, D.C. Entitled "Historical Discourse on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention," the address gave all the evidence of the hand of a well-trained church historian. Superbly organized and extremely well written, the address, however, did not deal explicitly with the origins of the SBC. Whitsitt was obviously more interested in providing a comprehensive overview of the SBC from 1845 to 1895 than in depicting origins.

One senses in Whitsitt, also, both the healing of time and hesitancy to fan past fires of hostility by resurrecting the knotty and emotional issues of history. While he certainly did not feel obliged to confess the sins of slavery of his southern ancestors, neither did he want to excoriate Northern Baptists for alleged constitutional violations. Consequently, he avoided a rehash of negative historical interpretations, seeking instead to reconstrue SBC beginnings in as positive a manner as possible.

Whitsitt's positive interpretations were fourfold. First, echoing one of Johnson's emphases, he declared that the separation "was happily circumscribed in extent." Whitsitt reminded his 1895 Southern Baptist audience that the schism "related exclusively to the missionary operations." Quoting Johnson's "Address to the Public," he said that "the fathers of that day were solicitous that this point should be clearly understood."

Second, while limited in scope, the division, said Whitsitt as Williams before him, was "unavoidable." "The best and wisest men in the North consented to a division because they regarded it as being ... a necessary evil," said Whitsitt, while "the wisest and best men in the South accepted the division as being imperatively required."

Third, Whitsitt, continuing with his positive spins, said that "in many respects the separation has also been of signal advantage." For one thing, the SBC exodus promoted peace and union between abolitionists of the North and those Northern Baptists who had remained neutral on the slavery issue. Moreover, the division intensified Southern Baptist missionary activity. He demonstrated with the increased financial giving records of Southern Baptists to home missions. For Whitsitt, this increased missionary zeal among Southern Baptists "was worth all the pain and sacrifice that we had to endure in breaking up the relations ... with our Northern brethren." In making this point, Whitsitt had a noble purpose, but the highlighting of missions in Southern Baptist history, ironically, has caused some of its historians to obscure the tragic legacy of racial prejudice.

Fourth, Whitsitt rejoiced that the 1845 rupture "was for the most part a peaceable one." Acknowledging the presence of unavoidable friction, "public negotiations on either side were marked by the dignity and moderation that become Christian brethren." (24)

Slavery: A Muted Factor, 1900-1950

During the period from 1900 to 1950, white Southern Baptist historians began producing some major books on Baptist history. A. H. Newman of McMaster University in Canada, John T. Christian of New Orleans Seminary, and Robert A. Baker and W. W. Barnes of Southwestern Seminary each wrote Baptist histories. Baker and Barnes are especially significant for this study because they focused their research on Southern Baptist history. No single pattern of SBC origins emerged from the four historians, but Barnes/Baker tended to follow a line of interpretation which, while identifying the centrality of slavery, abridged to some degree the impact of slavery on SBC history.

A. H. Newman, 1894

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, one Baptist church historian of the South, A. H. Newman, demonstrated a growing absence of defensiveness regarding the slavery issue. Unlike Johnson, Williams, Burrows, and Whitsitt, Newman neither remained silent nor ignored the crucial role of slavery in the formation of the SBC. Way ahead of his time, Newman's historiography, however, would not become dominant or more fully expressed until the last half of the twentieth century. In his A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States (1894), Newman suggested clearly that slavery was the major issue in the formation of the SBC. (25) He did so, however, without the slightest trace of moral denunciation of Southern Baptists and with the deft hand of a historian employing non-inflammatory language.

Writing of the formation of the SBC and especially of the slavery issue, Newman said, "The Baptists of the South had, as a body, identified themselves with the institution, and were prepared not only to practice it, but to defend it with pen and sword." (26) In the next sentence, one senses something of the historian's own posture as he described the Northern Baptist position:

   The sentiment against domestic slavery grew rapidly at the North, and many
   Baptists were coming to feel that duty required them not only to protest
   against the enslavement of their fellow-men and brethren in Christ, but to
   use every practicable means for the overthrow of an institution which they
   looked upon as un-Christian and immoral. (27)

This fierce difference over slavery, not constitutional violations, appeared to be the essence of the issue for Newman. Indeed, Newman characterized W. B. Johnson's constitutional argument employed in the "Address to the Public" as "the charge of departure from the original principles of the Convention." (28) While one may view Newman's language of "the charge" as simply that of an objective historian, one may also see it as a means of minimizing the constitutional argument. As Whitsitt, Newman also claimed the division of 1845 was unavoidable in nature, advantageous to missions, and peaceable in tone. (29)

A couple of significant points should be noted about Newman and his historiography. With deep roots in the South, he was theologically educated at the Rochester Baptist Theological Seminary in the North. Moreover, he was long associated with Canadian and British Baptists, having taught for twenty years at McMaster University, a Canadian Baptist school. Indeed, he was teaching at McMaster when he wrote his history of Baptists in the United States. Also, his history was published by Charles Scribner's Sons; it was not an address presented before the SBC! Nor was it published by a denominational publishing house. (30) From where a historian speaks or writes may impact historiography as much as when one speaks.

John T. Christian, 1926

In the 1920s, John T. Christian, professor of Christian history at the Baptist Bible Institute in New Orleans, published a two-volume history of the Baptists. Devoting the second volume to Baptists in America, he called it A History of the Baptists in the United States: From the First Settlement of the Country to the Year 1845. However, Christian uttered not a word in the text itself regarding the 1845 division, nor of the factors which led to that tragic split. Indeed, the word "slavery" does not appear in the index of the book. Since he concluded his history at 1845, one can possibly understand the total lack of reference to the formation of the SBC in 1845. What one cannot understand is how he avoided describing the turbulent circumstances which led to 1845. The only reference in the entire volume to the factors which led to the rupture of Baptists in America is found in the "Preface" where, after alluding to the Antimissions and Campbellite conflicts, he said:

   There were other factors at work which were equally serious. About the year
   1835 began those political debates and animosities which were to occasion
   the Civil War. These factional differences were manifested in religious
   affairs. They ultimately led to the division of the Baptists of the North
   from those of the South. (31)

Christian's historiography is a blatant example of how the historian's work shapes history by what the historian fails to say. One cannot imagine a history of the South without race dominating, in one way or another, the story. Neither can one understand the story of Southern Baptists apart from that theme.

W. W. Barnes, 1954

Professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for forty years, William Wright Barnes wrote the official centennial history of the SBC. Published by the denominational press in 1954, the book was called simply The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953. Beyond question, Barnes assessed slavery to be the central cause of the formation of the SBC, so much so, in fact, that one SBC official writing in the Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists thought he overstated the case. (32)

In the chapter where Barnes discussed the formation of the SBC, he opened with an obvious but innocent sentence the SBC official wanted to modify: "The formation of the Southern Baptist Convention grew out of the division in the Home Mission Society and in the general Convention (foreign missions) over the question of slavery." (33) The issue of why Southern Baptists organized the SBC seemed closed in light of Barnes's directness.

But while Barnes pinpointed slavery as central, he also muffled the racial factor by pointing to other issues. He followed the bluntness of his emphasis on slavery with an important but. "But," he said in the very next sentence, "the tendency to division in American Baptist life was in evidence before slavery became an issue." (34) Barnes's slight equivocation regarding slavery appeared in the very first sentence of the book. Said Barnes, "From colonial times there were rivalries and jealousies between the Northern and Southern colonies." (35) He then added that the same conditions that hindered unity in secular life impacted Baptist groups in various geographical areas. In addition to the secular impact on Baptists, Barnes observed that Baptists themselves had imported varying emphases in theology and church polity from Europe to America. Then he concluded: "Some of these differences entered into the separation between Baptists of the South and the North in 1845." (36)

Interestingly, with one exception, Barnes failed to unpack "these differences" which he thought "entered into the separation." The exception was the issue of home missions. He described at length how prior to 1845 "pastors and editors in the South, and some state conventions, protested that the Home Mission Society was neglecting the Southern area and called for new organizations to meet the need." (37) But Barnes noted that these complaints, honestly made by Southerners, were unjustified. His point, however, was that division was in the air apart from the slavery issue. So while he was clear about the centrality of slavery in the schism, he muffled that issue slightly by other comments. (38)

Robert A. Baker, 1948/1974

Barnes's mantle as the "Dean of Southern Baptist Church Historians" fell on Robert A. Baker, Barnes's student who was a far more prolific writer than Barnes. Like his teacher, Baker taught church history for decades at Southwestern Seminary, focusing most of his scholarly research and writing on aspects of the history of the SBC. Baker produced the second book-length history of the SBC in 1974 with his statistically oriented study titled The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607-1972.

If his book was published in 1974, why, one may ask, include Baker with the historians from 1900-19507 For two reasons. One, Baker published in 1948 his Yale dissertation, dedicating it to "William Wright Barnes, my friend and teacher." Known as Relations Between Northern and Southern Baptists, this book contained Baker's basic historiography regarding the founding of the SBC. He said very little on the subject in his 1974 SBC history which one cannot find in his 1948 Relations. Two, Baker's historio-graphical approach fits more closely with that of Barnes than with those church historians who wrote after 1950.

So what was Baker's approach? Very similar to Barnes, he interpreted slavery, without question, as the catalyst for the SBC. (39) For some reason, however, Baker's writings tended to diminish the role of slavery and race by calling attention to other factors, surely secondary in importance in the organization of the SBC.

In a chapter on "Divisive Controversies" in the SBC, for example, Baker treated the three subjects of Campbellism, Antimissionism, and Sectionalism. One would think, given the magnitude of the subject for SBC history, that slavery would have merited a self-contained section of its own. However, Baker treated slavery under "Sectionalism," along with regional disagreements regarding home missions. (40)

Baker's preeminent theme in describing the SBC's beginnings in 1845 was not slavery but the ecclesiological structure Southern Baptists devised for the new convention. He appeared far more interested in interpreting the differences in the "societal" versus the "convention" approach to Baptist organization than pointing out slavery's power in the Baptist churches of the South. To be sure, he presented well the facts of the slavery debate. But his personal interpretations of the founding of the SBC centered far more on the ecclesiological differences which he thought existed between Northern and Southern Baptists. (41)

One further example of Baker's approach must suffice. Keenly aware of how Southerners in the mid-nineteenth century rationalized the founding of the SBC on the basis of constitutional, missional, and other factors, he recognized that underlying all of "these arguments for separation, of course, was the involvement of the South with the `peculiar institution'." (42) Almost in the next breath, however, Baker stated that "there were other strong considerations for a separate southern body" other than slavery. (43) So, like Barnes, his professor, Baker was clear about the centrality of slavery in the formation of the SBC, but he tended to minimize its impact by pointing to less important issues. (44)

Slavery: The Primary Factor, 1950-2000

The last half of the twentieth century, and especially the last quarter of the century, witnessed a significant change in interpreting Southern Baptist beginnings among white Baptist church historians in the South. Walter B. Shurden, H. Leon McBeth, Jesse C. Fletcher, and E. Luther Copeland, among others, have written in this vein.

Waiter B. Shurden, 1972

In 1972, Broadman Press published Not A Silent People: Controversies That Have Shaped Southern Baptists by Walter B. Shurden. (45) One chapter entitled "The `What About the Blacks?' Controversy or Baptists Argue Over Slavery and Segregation" began by asking what caused the controversial fire of 1845. Shurden, following generally an interpretation of his professor Claude L. Howe Jr., answered by saying that differences in theology, ecclesiology (denominational structure), or home missions did not cause the schism of 1845. (46) Obviously, Shurden was addressing the interpretations of twentieth-century popular culture and Southern Baptist church historians rather than evaluating the judgments of nineteenth-century Baptists, though he gave slight attention to the latter.

In asking, "What was the issue, the major issue and the immediate issue, in the organization of the Southern Baptist Convention?" Shurden answered:

   It was slavery, the same issue that tore the innarrds out of the nation a
   few years later. A cultural earthquake struck this young nation during the
   years 1830-1865; but before the quake created a political chasm between
   North and South, it had sliced the churches down their Mason-Dixon Line.
   The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in defense of the
   mid-nineteenth-century Southern culture. (47)

The date and context of Shurden's book should not be overlooked. The year 1972 was a comfortable distance from 1845 or even the racial turbulence of the late 50s and 60s. On the other hand, race was still very much a live issue for Southern Baptists in the 1970s. In the face of that fact, however, the denominational publishing house was open enough to risk an interpretation of the origins of the denomination which did not minimize the role of race.

H. Leon McBeth, 1987

A student of Robert A. Baker at Southwestern Seminary and now Distinguished Professor of Church History at Southwestern, Leon McBeth, by virtue of his mammoth and influential The Baptist Heritage, has become the leading interpreter of Baptist history in the last quarter of the last century. While The Baptist Heritage is a comprehensive survey of Baptist history in general, it contains an excellent section on the formation of the SBC.

McBeth's interpretation of SBC beginnings reflected slightly some of the emphases of the Barnes/Baker tradition, especially the role of ecclesiology and home missions. However, McBeth isolated and elevated slavery as the causative factor in a way uncharacteristic of either Barnes or Baker.

Describing the formation of the SBC, McBeth said, "At least three factors led to that fateful schism: disagreements on methods of organization, problems in home mission work, and the slavery controversy." (48) But then the Southwestern historian hurriedly added, "While each of these played an important role, they were not of equal weight; slavery was the final and most decisive factor which led Southern Baptists to form their own convention." (49) As if he thought it necessary to underscore slavery's centrality, McBeth wrote:

   Slavery was the main issue that led to the 1845 schism; that is a blunt
   historical fact. Other issues raised barriers and, in time, might have led
   to division, if not North-South, possibly East-West. However, slavery did
   lead to division. (50)

Moreover, it was clear that McBeth did not swallow the explanations of nineteenth-century southerners as to why they founded the SBC. In part of his analysis of the 1845 "Address to the Public," McBeth said:

   Third, the purpose of the new body, the public address continued, was not
   the defense of slavery or "the upholding of any form of human policy," but
   simply "the extension of Messiah's kingdom." That statement reflects
   Southern sensitivity to the fact that some would view them as a "slave
   convention." (51)

One can understandably speak of the Barnes/Baker/McBeth tradition of church history at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. Together their three careers virtually spanned the twentieth century at that one institution. But McBeth's historiography of the SBC, while building on the tradition of his teachers, also clarified that tradition. Near the end of the nineteenth century, W. H. Whitsitt, an excellent Southern Baptist church historian, could not bring himself to tell Southern Baptists the truth about their origins. One hundred years later, near the end of the twentieth century, Leon McBeth, did not shrink from telling them that truth.

Jesse C. Fletcher, 1995

Another student of Robert A. Baker, Jesse C. Fletcher, wrote a 463-page sesquicentennial history of the SBC in 1994. Published by Broadman & Holman, this was the third and best major history of the SBC. It was the best written, best organized, and best interpreted. Fletcher, chancellor of Hardin-Simmons University at the time of the writing, related creatively the SBC history to the history of national and world events, such as the Depression, world wars, and the civil rights struggle. Mirroring the story telling and artistry Fletcher demonstrated in Bill Wallace of China, Fletcher's history sparkled with people stories. One of the bright parts of the book was the way he corrected the "maleness" of Baptist history. (52)

Upon first reading Fletcher's artistic treatment of the founding of the SBC, however, one may conclude that his history belongs more to the Barnes/Baker than the McBeth approach. At points, he, too, appeared to lessen the slavery issue by pointing to other issues. For example, he said that the meeting in Augusta in 1845 was "because of discriminating procedures imposed by northern abolitionists." (53) While certainly true, that statement tends to cloud the real reason why those Baptists met in Augusta.

Also, when Fletcher identified the three "intertwining historical roots" of the SBC, he placed slavery after denominational identity and missions. He summarized the reasons for the 1845 Augusta meeting this way:

   Thus, though the story's crucial event took place in Augusta, Georgia, in
   1845, that event constituted the interaction of a growing Baptist
   confessional and connectional consciousness, a passionate missionary
   conviction, and a visceral sectional spirit. (54)

Placing these three factors together as the precipitating causes of the organization of the Southern Baptist Convention skewed rather than clarified the crucial role of slavery.

A more careful reading of Fletcher presents another picture, however, one that places slavery at the very center of Southern Baptist beginnings. Early in his history, Fletcher isolated slavery as a shaping factor in the SBC.

   Baptists located in the southern states developed a strong sensitivity for
   their region with its predominantly agrarian economy and, unfortunately,
   the institution of slavery. Though a product of New England commercialism,
   this cruel tradition found fertile ground in the South's agricultural base
   and soon became the undergirding reality of southern culture. As Baptists
   grew in the South they became increasingly identified with their culture.
   (55)

Describing the 293 delegates who gathered in Augusta in May 1845, Fletcher said they were motivated by "deeply held religious convictions but they also were subject to a sectional and social bias that soon engulfed the region they represented in the bloodiest of all civil wars." (56) When Fletcher analyzed the original 293 delegates to the first SBC, he pointed both to the issues of race and gender as identifying factors in the formation and, by implication, legacy of the SBC. Writing historically but also prophetically of the Augusta gathering, Fletcher said:

   Who was there as well as who was not there reflected the cultural
   identification peculiar to southern Baptist life. That cultural union would
   mark the Baptist Convention for decades to come. It was to be all but
   inseparable from a white male-dominated culture dependent upon agriculture,
   especially cotton. It was a culture marked at that time by slavery and for
   years following by its demeaning aftermath. (57)

While at times misting up the picture, Fletcher nonetheless objectively described the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention as accurately as any historian up to his time. Published by the denominational press, his book presented quite a contrast to the nineteenth-century interpreters of Southern Baptist beginnings.

E. Luther Copeland, 1995

In a stellar contribution to Southern Baptist historiography, E. Luther Copeland, former Southern Baptist missionary to Japan and former professor of missions and world religions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote with prophetic courage and historical accuracy in The Southern Baptist Convention and the Judgement of History: The Taint of Original Sin. Published by University Press of America in 1995, Copeland's book must be reckoned, without question, as one of the most valuable interpretations of Southern Baptist history ever written.

Some white Baptist historians of the South ignored and others clouded the role of race in Southern Baptist history. Copeland, on the other hand, exposed the captivity of Southern Baptists to their culture. In the first paragraph of the first chapter of his scorching ethical history, Copeland rooted Southern Baptist history in slavery and chided Southern Baptist historians for diminishing its role.

   The SBC had its origin on the wrong side of the slavery question. It is
   true that there were other issues which have somewhat confused the matter,
   issues of regionalism, denominational organization and the following of
   established procedures in spite of conscientious scruples. Southern Baptist
   mythology has relegated the defense of slavery to the position of a
   secondary factor in producing the SBC in 1845, though outsiders are baffled
   by this "myth" and see it as an evasion of the truth. Even Southern Baptist
   historians have tended to set slavery in the context of other issues which
   had the potential to cause schism but did not. Thus they diminish the
   importance of the slavery issue. (58)

"It is a strange irony," bemoaned Copeland, "that a denomination which was born because of its support of slavery nevertheless seems to have thought of itself as `God's last and only hope' for world evangelization." (59)

Copeland viewed the climate of intolerance as reflected in the Southern Baptist defense of slavery as the hermeneutical principle for understanding the entire history of the SBC. The SBC defense of slavery, he argued, "infected the major aspects of Southern Baptist life." (60)

The SBC not only defended slavery in its beginning history; it has in its subsequent history, argued Copeland, sanctioned secession, affirmed white supremacy, practiced missionary imperialism, denigrated American Baptists and other Christians, demeaned women, and enforced a rigid theological orthodoxy, all because it had imbibed the intolerance of southern culture, an intolerance born of the defense of the slavery system. (61)

It goes without saying that no SBC denominational press placed its imprimatur on Copeland's book. And neither SBC fundamentalists, moderates, nor liberals, can find a hiding place from Copeland's indicting interpretation of SBC history. Whereas, some church historians identified with the 1979 :fundamentalist takeover viewed the so-called "conservative resurgence" as evidence of the providential movement of God, Copeland suggested a very different interpretation as he asked, "Is the present predicament of the SBC the judgment of God upon us for our sins?" (62) For those SBC moderates who believe that the SBC world went haywire only in 1979, Copeland uttered unflattering words in his conclusion:

   This book has sought to trace what I believe t0 be the major aberrations in
   the history of the SBC back to our original sin of the defense of the
   slavery system. Most of what I think is wrong with us happened long before
   rightists captured the SBC. It occurred under moderate or relatively
   moderate leadership. Our present predicament is deeply rooted in our past
   and may be traced all the way back to our beginnings on the wrong side of
   the slavery issue. I am suggesting that our problems did not begin in 1979
   but in 1845. (63)

Summary

Baptist historiography is the telling of the Baptist story. And Baptist historiography, as Jesse Fletcher said, is both shaped by factors at the time of the telling, while also shaping the future of the Baptist identity. (64)

Three factors in particular have shaped the telling of the story of how the SBC came into being. One, when the story was told. While not always the case in writing history, proximity, in this instance, obscured rather than clarified. The closer white Baptist church historians were to the 1845 event, the more silent they became about the issue of slavery as the causative issue or the more they confused the origins by pointing to factors other than slavery. Conversely, the further from 1845, the more historians zeroed-in on slavery as the major cause. W. W. Adams, a creative and insightful New Testament professor, once facetiously said that he became a prophet when he started drawing his Social Security check. Likewise, white Baptist historians became prophets the further they were removed from the explosive emotional issue of slavery.

Two, where the story was told also impacted the telling of the story. Content related to context. To tell the story before an audience of the annual Southern Baptist Convention as did William H. Whitsitt in 1895 resulted in a very different story from one published by the University Press of America as did Luther Copeland in 1995.

Three, how the story was told, of course, was very important. The writing of history is both science and art. But it is also a moral exercise. Courage and ruthless honesty are indispensable ingredients in historiography of any kind.

(1.) Robert Andrew Baker, Relations Between Northern and Southern Baptists (Fort Worth, Tex.: n.p., 1948), 81. Baker noted the differences in the circumstances of the Home Mission Society and the Triennial Convention, but the result was the same: slaveholders would not be appointed missionaries.

(2.) See Annual, SBC, 1845, 17-20. A copy of the document is printed in Robert A. Baker, A Baptist Source Book: With Particular Reference to Southern Baptists (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1966), 118-22.

(3.) James M. Morton Jr. has questioned Johnson's authorship, providing some evidence for his view. Regardless of who wrote it, however, Southern Baptists printed the statement in the 1845 SBC Annual: "By order of the convention." It served clearly as a formal explanation of the organization of the SBC. For Morton's point of view, see James M. Morton Jr., "Leadership of W. B. Johnson in the Formation of the Southern Baptist Convention," Baptist History and Heritage 5 (January 1970): 11-12). See also Robert G. Gardner, A Decade of Debate and Division: Georgia Baptists and the Formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995), 43.

(4.) Annual, SBC, 1845, 17.

(5.) Ibid. David Benedict, writing fifteen years later, confirmed Johnson's statement. Speaking of the Baptist division, Benedict said, "This separation was very quietly effected, and up to this time I have not heard of any collisions between the two wings of the denomination, which agree in all matters, except the lawfulness of southern slavery." See David Benedict, Fifty Years Among the Baptists (Boston: Sheldon & Company, 1860; republished by Seminary Publications, Little Rock, May 1977), 217. Bold for emphasis.

(6.) Annual, SBC, 1845, 17.

(7.) Ibid.

(8.) See the report of the committee chaired by Francis Wayland at the 1845 meeting of the Triennial Convention in Providence, Rhode Island, in A. H. Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894), 448; see also the resolution introduced to the April 1845 meeting of the Home Mission Society as cited in William Williams, "Historical Sketch Contained in the Annual Sermon" in SBC Annual, 1872, Appendix D, 3, 4.

(9.) Annual, SBC, 1845, 17.

(10.) Johnson quoted the resolution of neutrality adopted by the 1844 Triennial Convention. See Annual, SBC, 1845, 18. For the resolution adopted by the Home Mission Society in 1844, see Robert A. Baker, A Baptist Source Book, 97.

(11.) Annual, SBC, 1845, 19.

(12.) Ibid., 18, 19.

(13.) In making his case for the formation of the SBC, Johnson followed the arguments of the circular letter of the Virginia Baptist Foreign Mission Society. J. B. Jeter probably wrote the Virginia document. For a complete copy of the Virginia document, see Baker, A Baptist Source Book, 109-13.

(14.) The others were James E Boyce, John A. Broadus, and Basil Manly Jr. For a brief biographical sketch on Williams, see Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2 (1958): 1503.

(15.) During the period 1864-88, some Baptists, especially northerners, made efforts to reunify Baptists North and South. See Baker, Relations, 154. In his annual SBC sermon, Williams, like many Southern Baptists, argued for a more distinct identity on the part of Southern Baptists, not reunification with Baptists of the North. Said Williams, "Only our own organization can enlist to any considerable extent the co-operation and energies of the great mass of our people. A divided sympathy and support will only therefore cause our Convention to languish, and will bring discord into our own counsels, paralyze our own resources, and injure in the end the Lord's work, without accomplishing probably the end which it may have had in view." See Annual, SBC, 1872, Appendix D, 8.

(16.) Annual, SBC, 1872, Appendix D, 1. Italics added for emphasis.

(17.) Ibid., 4.

(18.) Ibid., 2, 4.

(19.) Ibid., 2, 3, 4.

(20.) For a brief biographical sketch, see, Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 1 (1958): 210.

(21.) The Boston Board of the Triennial Convention issued a formal reply to Johnson's "Address" in the December 1845 issue of the magazine. In May 1846, said Burrows, "an able rejoinder" to the Boston article was published.

(22.) Annual, SBC, 1885, 38.

(23.) Ibid., 37.

(24.) All quotes in the previous paragraphs may be found in the Annual, SBC, 1895, 78, 79.

(25.) Although Newman published his history in 1894, even a year before Whitsitt's Jubilee Address, we have listed Newman with the historians of the 1900-50 period because his point of view was so markedly different from that of other historians who wrote in the nineteenth century. Moreover, Newman did not die until 1933, having taught in several major Baptist institutions until 1929.

(26.) A. H. Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894), 443.

(27.) Ibid.

(28.) Ibid., 451. Italics for emphasis.

(29.) Ibid., 449.

(30.) For a sketch of Newman, see Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2 (1958): 977.

(31.) John T Christian, A History of the Baptists of the United States: From the First Settlement of the Country to the Year 1845 (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1926), 6.

(32.) See J. W. Storer's article "Southern Baptist Convention, The" in Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2: (1958): 1244.

(33.) William Wright Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1954), 12.

(34.) Ibid.

(35.) Ibid., 1.

(36.) Ibid.

(37.) Ibid., 12.

(38.) Professor Barnes probably correctly observed that if slavery had not divided Baptists North and South, the issue of home missions may have divided them East and West. See ibid., 18.

(39.) Baker, Relations, 81.

(40.) Robert A. Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1974), 153-59.

(41.) See how this theme dominated in ibid., 161-77.

(42.) Ibid., 171.

(43.) Ibid., 172.

(44.) What we would call the Barnes/Baker interpretation of SBC origins was circulated widely by study course books in the 1950s and 1960s. See Hugh Wamble, Through Trial to Triumph (Nashville: Convention Press, 1958), 55-67; Pope A. Duncan, Our Baptist Story (Nashville: Convention Press, 1958), 40-47; Norman W. Cox, We Southern Baptists (Nashville: Convention Press, 1961), 28-31.

(45.) Smyth & Helwys published an updated and slightly revised edition in 1995. See Walter B. Shurden, Not A Silent People: Controversies That Have Shaped Southern Baptists (Macon: Smyth & Helwys Publishing Inc., 1995).

(46.) To see this verified on a state level, see Gardner, 4, 5.

(47.) Ibid., 31.

(48.) H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), 381.

(49.) Ibid.

(50.) Ibid., 382.

(51.) Ibid., 390.

(52.) Jesse C. Fletcher, The Southern Baptist Convention: A Sesquicentennial History (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 16, 23, 31, 35, 85-87, 163, 173, 181, 225.

(53.) Ibid., 10.

(54.) Ibid., 13.

(55.) Ibid., 2

(56.) Ibid., 10.

(57.) Ibid., 11.

(58.) E. Luther Copeland, The Southern Baptist Convention and the Judgement of History: The Taint of Original Sin (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, Inc., 1995), 7.

(59.) Ibid., 3.

(60.) Ibid., xv.

(61.) Ibid., 126, 131.

(62.) Ibid., 3, 132.

(63.) Ibid., 131.

(64.) Fletcher, 6.

Walter B. Shurden is Callaway Professor of Christianity and executive director, Center For Baptist Studies, Mercer University. Lori Redwine Varnadoe is marketing coordinator, Reynolds Plantation, Macon, Georgia, and a former student of Shurden.