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The Sect to Denomination Process in America: The Freewill Baptist Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ruth B. Bordin
Ruth B. Bordin
Affiliation:
Curator of Manuscripts, Michigan Historical Collections, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

Shortly after the turn of the century Ernst Troeltsch joined Max Weber in examining the history of religious organizations from the point of view of the newly evolving discipline of sociology. Of the contributions Troeltsch made in his monumental study, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, the one which has proved most stimulating when applied to American church history was his differentiation of sect-type from church-type religious organization. In 1929, H. Richard Niebuhr in his Social Sources of Denoniinationalisrn elaborated Troeltsch's ideas, especially as they related to American developments, suggesting that in the American environment the denomination occupied a midway position between church and sect. While Troeltsch hints at the tendency of the sect to acquire churchly characteristics in time, Niebuhr spells out the steps in the process of transformation from sect to denomination which he sees as following inevitably, arguing that each generation's sects must become denominations in the next generation. These in turn leave behind a new group of disinherited whose needs are unmet and from which spring the next sect movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 1965 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1965

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References

1. The best short summary is that found in Jamison's, A. Leland article, “Religions of the Christian Perimeter,” in Religion in American Life: The Shaping of American Religion, (Princeton 1961), I, 167–72Google Scholar. See also, Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, (New York, 1931; 1960, ed.) especially pages 462, 474–79, 695–96, 707–09, 741–43, and 781–82Google Scholar; and Niebuhr, Richard, The Social Sources of Denominationalism, (New York, 1929; 1960 ed.), especially pages 18–19, 30–31, and 178–81.Google Scholar

2. Goen, C. C., Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740–1800, (New Haven, 1962), 107.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., 272–73; Gaustad, Edwin S., The Great Awakening in New England, (New York, 1957), 120–22.Google Scholar

4. Buzzell, John, The Life of Elder Benjamin Randall, (Limerick, 1827), 10–19.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 28–80; Stewart, I. D., The History of the Free Will Baptists for Half a Century, (Dover, 1862), I, 32–40Google Scholar; Baxter, Norman A., History of the Free Will Baptists, (Rochester, 1957), 25Google Scholar; Goen, , Revivalism and Separatism, 106.Google Scholar

6. Stewart, , History, 26.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., 53.

8. Stewart, , History, 53–59, 82Google Scholar; Baxter, , History, 43–44.Google Scholar

9. Baxter, , History, 29.Google Scholar

10. Minutes of the Fourth General Conference of the Free-will Baptist Denomination, 1827–1856, (Providence, 1830), 16Google Scholar; Stewart, , History, 450.Google Scholar

11. The introduction to the Treatise shows clearly the conflict they still felt between commitment to a formal statement of doctrine and the early insistence on scripture as the only source of belief. It reads, “… the exigency of the times renders it necessary that we publish a Treatise, embracing all the leading points of the doctrine and practice of the Freewill Baptists, giving our scriptural reasons therefor; also, our reasons for taking the Holy Scriptures as our only rule of faith and practice.” Treatise on the Faith of the Freewill Baptists, with a summary of their usages in church government, (Dover, 1834), [i].Google Scholar

12. This was made possible by the fact that the denomination published an historical volume, listing the names of all its ordained ministers to date and including biographical sketches on most of them, as part of its centennial observances. All of the statistical analyses of Freewill Baptist Clergy are based on information obtained from that volume, Burgess and Ward, Free Baptist Cyclopedia.

13. Dwight, Timothy, Travels in New England and New York, (New Haven, 1822), IV, 161Google Scholar. Dwight however was not always a reliable observer, and his prejudices always showed. In another of his ‘letters’ about the Free-Wilers, he wrote, “These do not, however, appear to be Arminians in the proper sense. So far as my information extends, they are in considerable numbers, fast approaching to Deism. Very extensively they appear to consider religion as consisting chiefly in being plunged; to deny the Sabbath as a divine institution; to contemn family prayer; to have a few settled ministers, and little even of external appearance of religion.” ibid, IV, 453.

14. Rand, Asa, Two Sermons on Christian Fellowship, (Gorham, 1811)Google Scholar, as quoted in Stewart, , History, 283.Google Scholar

15. The Life Eaperience and Travels of John Colby, Preacher of the Gospel, Written by Himself, (Lowell, 1838), 21.Google Scholar

16. Burgess, and Ward, , Cyclopedia, 716.Google Scholar

17. Of his preaching of a Sunday a young minister wrote, “I enjoyed unusual liberty.” Diary, July 1, 1838, of Ransom Dunn, Ransom Dunn Family Papers, Michigan Historical Collections of The University of Michigan. Or again, “I spoke with Freedom.” Dairy, July, 1838, Dunn Papers. Randall also used this phrase. John Buzzdll quotes Randall's journal on one of his evangelistic excursions, “I f o u n d great freedom in preaching.” Buzzell, , Life of Elder Benjamin Randall, 124.Google Scholar

18. Baxter, , History, 51–52.Google Scholar

19. Sweet, William Warren, Religion in the Development of American Culture, (New York, 1952), 6–7.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., 7.

21. Minutes of the General Conference of the Freewill Baptist Connection, 1827–1856, (Dover, 1859), 26–27.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., 127.

23. Ibid., 147.

24. Ibid., 68.

25. Ibid., 142.

26. Ibid., 142.

27. Ibid., 171.

28. Ibid., 80.

29. Ibid., 97–98, 104.

30. As late as 1856, it was still being urged on the Yearly Meetings by the General Conference as the only possible way to meet effectively the needs of the smaller churches. Ibid., 416.

31. Minutes of the General Conference, 1827–1856, 207.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., 201.

33. Ibid., 242.

34. Ibid., 240.

35. Sixth Annual Report of the Freewill Baptist Education Society, (Dover, 1845), 11.Google Scholar

36. Minutes of the General Conference, 1827–1856, 285.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 237.

38. William Hurlin to Ransom Dunn, undated 1849, Dunn Papers.

39. D. R. Bartlett to Ransom Dunn, April 20, 1846, Dunn Papers. He added that in the past he “rode hundreds of miles and preached day after day, and even year after year,, without receiving enough to shoe my horse…”

40. The persistence of the old pattern is illustrated by the case of Perly Hall who reported that God had lately reclaimed him from his backsliding, “agane calling [me] into the Gospel field and ennabling me again to sound salvation to my fellow dying mortals and hoist them to the Blessed Sayeior,” as he resumed preaching after a period when the spirit had not been with him. Perly Hall to Ransom Dunn, May 1, 1849, Dunn Papers.

41. For example Samuel Bates who had been ordained five years before, who had received a secondary school education, and had a family to sustain was seriously considering three to five years study at Hillsdalc College and Theological Department, writing, “I hunger and thirst after more knowledge, sanctified knowledge, for this is an important part of the minister's moral power.” S. D. Bates to Ransom Dunn, November 19, 1855, Dunn Papers.

42. Minutes of the General Conference, 1827–1856, 331–32.

43. Ibid., 419.

44. Minutes of the Seventeenth General Conference of the Free-will Baptist Connection, (Dover, 1859), 27.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., 22. Support was still far from generous. One observer believed that a salary of two hundred dollars a year was average compensation. Freewill Baptist Quarterly, II: 4 (Providence, 1854), 416.Google Scholar

46. Circular, Ca. 1859, of the Wisconsin Ministerial Association, Dunn Papers. Similarly in Michigan ministers formed “an association for the study of the scriptures in the original languages & for mutual improvement.” H. L. StanIey to Ransom Dunn, November 15, 1858. Dunn Papers. How successful this kind of pressure was in educating the untrained rural preacher is hard to evaluate. One observer travelling in Indiana at about this time found the Freewill Baptist ministers “so illiterate that they cannot sustain themselves long in an intelligent community, hence the churches are generally in backwoods places.” S. J. Fowler to Ransom Dunn, October 11, 1858, Dunn Papers.

47. A letter, January 16, 1850, of William Burr, editor of the Freewill Baptist weekly, The Morning Star, to Ransom Dunn, discusses the cost of publishing 2000 copies of a Dunn sermon and comments that the publishing house has never made money on printing a sermon. Dunn Papers.

48. Minutes of the Eighteenth General Conference of the Freewill Baptist Connexion, (Dover, 1862), 34.Google Scholar

49. A semi-literate fifty year old Wisconsin farmer who had lately begun to preach wondered “where and what school if any Shall I go… or weather it would be any bennefit without a knowledge of english grammer.” L. B. Swallow to Ransom Dunn, March 10, 1860, Dunn Papers.

50. Minutes of the Nineteenth General Con ference of the Freewill Baptist Connexion, (Dover, 1865), 141Google Scholar. The shortage of ministers was indeed acute and had been aggravated by the Civil War as the strong anti-slavery sentiments of the Free-will Baptists resulted in a high proportion of their young men volunteering for service. In 1865 eleven out of 27 congregations in the Hill sdale Association were without ministers. Minutes of the Twenty-second Anniversary of the Hillsdale Baptist Association, (Hillsdale, 1865), 5Google Scholar. In 1857 the proportion had been one out of three, still high, but lower than in 1865. Minutes of the Fourteenth Anniversary of the Hilisdale Baptist Association, (Hillsdale, 1857), 4.Google Scholar

51. Minutes of the Twentieth General Conference of the Freewill Baptist Connection, (Dover, 1868), 152.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., 151.

53. Minutes of the Nineteenth General Conference, 134.

54. Minutes of the Twenty-fourth General Conference of the Freewill Baptist Connection, (Dover, 1880), 43.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 42–43.

56. Table 4. is based on the obituaries of 568 Congregational ministers who died in the years 1878–83, 1909, and 1919 as they appeared in the Congregational Year Book, (Boston, 1879–1884, 1910, and 1920)Google Scholar. Every minister dying in those years and ordained before 1890 except for 8 for which insufficient information was available, is represented, thus ensuring a random sample of the Congregational clergy for the decades under study.

57. Data were analyzed for those clergy who were in the original Group 1. 660 ministers were used in this part of the study. Insufficient data was available for some of the other third. Others were eliminated because they did nut meet the criterion of spending half or more of their ministry in one geographical region.