What do you think?
Rate this book
Baptists in Early North America #3
Baptists in Early North America: Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists, Volume III
Baptists in Early North America—Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists, Volume III covers the period 1664 to 1808, from the date some members of Newport’s first Baptist church began meeting for worship on the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) through the first 137 years of their life as the Newport Seventh Day Baptist Church. Transcriptions of the church’s first three record books (1692–1808) are preceded by extensive excerpts from the manuscripts and letters of Samuel Hubbard, one of the founding members; these document the origins in John Clarke’s Newport Baptist church and the influences from Sabbath keeping Baptists in mid-seventeenth century England. The record follows the covenant community, nurtured in colonial Rhode Island’s unique religious freedom, from Newport’s pioneer period through its Golden Age as a major colonial seaport and its devastation during the Revolutionary War. Scattered membership could be found east and south into Plymouth Colony and Martha’s Vineyard and west to Westerly and Hopkinton, Rhode Island, and New London, Connecticut. Members from Native Americans and African “servants” to Rhode Island Governors and wealthy merchants are also documented. This congregation had involvement with other Baptists in founding Rhode Island College (Brown University) and through the Second Great Awakening, then joined with daughter congregations and others to form the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference in 1802.
248 pages, Hardcover
Published January 13, 2017
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Janet Thorngate
1 book2 followersJanet Thorngate is chairman of the Seventh Day Baptist Council on History (formerly the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society) and former librarian of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Library and Archives (www.sdbhistory.org).
She has degrees in English and History from Salem College and West Virginia University (MA) and has taught Church History at the Seventh Day Baptist School of Ministry and English at Salem International University and West Virginia University.
She has degrees in English and History from Salem College and West Virginia University (MA) and has taught Church History at the Seventh Day Baptist School of Ministry and English at Salem International University and West Virginia University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 26, 2019
I read Janet Thorngate’s book in one day and thoroughly enjoyed it - and the escape from the 21st Century. If you have an interest in the denomination or the period, you’ll find it a delightful and very informative journey.
Baptists in Early North America—Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists is volume 3 of a series about Baptist history in early North America. The Seventh Day Baptists are a unique identity within the Baptist world and they are the least well-known grouping. This book will help dispell that relative invisibility by illustrating their historical credentials.
The series itself provides a significant contribution to religious and Baptist scholarship, recovering never-before-published original records and manuscripts for students, scholars, and genealogists. The series itself deserves the attention it focusses on a grouping which has had such a significant and lasting impact on American life.
The story of the Newport Seventh Day Baptists begins in 1664 when some members of Newport’s first Baptist church began meeting for worship on the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday). The documents which are the core of the book follow them through the first 137 years of their life as the Newport Seventh Day Baptist (SDB) Church.
The transcriptions of the church’s first three record books (1692–1808) are preceded by extensive excerpts from the manuscripts and letters of Samuel Hubbard, one of the founding members. These document the origins in John Clarke’s Newport Baptist church and the influences from Sabbath keeping Baptists in mid-seventeenth century England.
The record follows the covenant community, nurtured in colonial Rhode Island’s unique religious freedom, from Newport’s pioneer period through its Golden Age as a major colonial seaport and its devastation during the Revolutionary War.
Scattered membership could be found east and south into Plymouth Colony and Martha’s Vineyard and west to Westerly and Hopkinton, Rhode Island, and New London, Connecticut. The members were a surprisingly diverse group from Native Americans, African-American ‘servants’ to Rhode Island Governors and wealthy merchants.
Although I have some ancestors who were in the region at the time none that know of where members of the congregation. I was entertained to discover, however, that I am a 14th cousin of Governor Samuel Ward (1725-1776) who was a member of the church. Our common ancestor is further back in time.
The congregation had involvement with other Baptists in founding Rhode Island College (now Brown University). and through the Second Great Awakening, then joined with other congregations to form the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference in 1802.
I was particularly interested in the reference to the English Sabbatarians in the detailed historical introduction and got a much better sense of the cross Atlantic support which the Newport seventh day Baptists and their English cousins gave each other.
The record books provide some compelling insights into the lives of the New England Sabbatarians and their times and illustrate the changes in congregational preoccupations over the period.
Thorngate’s thorough work identifies the individuals in the original documents spelling out their relationships to paint pictures which help us see the real people.
There is obviously still a rich vein of original material from this period on either side of the Atlantic to be mined.
Although not a focus of the book, the formation of the SDB denomination is something accomplished immediately after the period that this book covers. It was the process whereby different church groups considered joining and some chose not to. I’m intrigued by the possibility that the times may have produced independent Sabbatarian groups as well.
However, the earliest Pennsylvania and New Jersey SDB churches were not ‘daughter churches’ of the Rhode Island bodies (having totally separate origins) but early on sought fellowship with each other, somewhat formalized through their many loosely organized yearly meetings.
When the conference was forming, the main issues discouraging union were, as is often the case, governance issues, not theological questions, but the churches which ultimately chose not to join were all short-lived. For the next 200 years, churches formed that called themselves Seventh Day Baptist (some independently, some 'daughters') and there are lists of them identifying which joined and which didn’t join the General Conference (for example in Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, volume 2) but none became independent Sabbatarian groups.
The later 19th century origins of Seventh-day Adventists and Church of God Seventh-Day groups have separate histories. It seems that no-one yet has carefully researched the relationships between SDBs and the emerging 19th century Sabbath-keeping Church of God groups. There may have been an SDB ‘association of churches’ in the American Midwest in areas which some participating churches were or eventually became ‘Church of God’ congregations. Many American churches took part in a regional association but never joined the SDB Conference. Internationally there has often been cross-fertilisation of Sabbatarian groups - often described differently by believers and historians.
But to return to the book and its direct concerns...
Ronald Angelo Johnson of the Department of History at Texas State University is better placed to judge the work academically. His review in Baptist History and Heritage, Summer 2018, shows he was clearly impressed: ‘The study exhibits an incomparable grasp of denominational historiography…’. His conclusion?
‘The distinctive life of the Seventh Day Baptist Church, the volume’s diverse collection of records, and Thorngate’s impressively details footnotes will inform future histories of the church and the city…’
A powerful recommendation.
See more at https://leonjlyell.blogspot.com/2019/....
Baptists in Early North America—Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists is volume 3 of a series about Baptist history in early North America. The Seventh Day Baptists are a unique identity within the Baptist world and they are the least well-known grouping. This book will help dispell that relative invisibility by illustrating their historical credentials.
The series itself provides a significant contribution to religious and Baptist scholarship, recovering never-before-published original records and manuscripts for students, scholars, and genealogists. The series itself deserves the attention it focusses on a grouping which has had such a significant and lasting impact on American life.
The story of the Newport Seventh Day Baptists begins in 1664 when some members of Newport’s first Baptist church began meeting for worship on the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday). The documents which are the core of the book follow them through the first 137 years of their life as the Newport Seventh Day Baptist (SDB) Church.
The transcriptions of the church’s first three record books (1692–1808) are preceded by extensive excerpts from the manuscripts and letters of Samuel Hubbard, one of the founding members. These document the origins in John Clarke’s Newport Baptist church and the influences from Sabbath keeping Baptists in mid-seventeenth century England.
The record follows the covenant community, nurtured in colonial Rhode Island’s unique religious freedom, from Newport’s pioneer period through its Golden Age as a major colonial seaport and its devastation during the Revolutionary War.
Scattered membership could be found east and south into Plymouth Colony and Martha’s Vineyard and west to Westerly and Hopkinton, Rhode Island, and New London, Connecticut. The members were a surprisingly diverse group from Native Americans, African-American ‘servants’ to Rhode Island Governors and wealthy merchants.
Although I have some ancestors who were in the region at the time none that know of where members of the congregation. I was entertained to discover, however, that I am a 14th cousin of Governor Samuel Ward (1725-1776) who was a member of the church. Our common ancestor is further back in time.
The congregation had involvement with other Baptists in founding Rhode Island College (now Brown University). and through the Second Great Awakening, then joined with other congregations to form the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference in 1802.
I was particularly interested in the reference to the English Sabbatarians in the detailed historical introduction and got a much better sense of the cross Atlantic support which the Newport seventh day Baptists and their English cousins gave each other.
The record books provide some compelling insights into the lives of the New England Sabbatarians and their times and illustrate the changes in congregational preoccupations over the period.
Thorngate’s thorough work identifies the individuals in the original documents spelling out their relationships to paint pictures which help us see the real people.
There is obviously still a rich vein of original material from this period on either side of the Atlantic to be mined.
Although not a focus of the book, the formation of the SDB denomination is something accomplished immediately after the period that this book covers. It was the process whereby different church groups considered joining and some chose not to. I’m intrigued by the possibility that the times may have produced independent Sabbatarian groups as well.
However, the earliest Pennsylvania and New Jersey SDB churches were not ‘daughter churches’ of the Rhode Island bodies (having totally separate origins) but early on sought fellowship with each other, somewhat formalized through their many loosely organized yearly meetings.
When the conference was forming, the main issues discouraging union were, as is often the case, governance issues, not theological questions, but the churches which ultimately chose not to join were all short-lived. For the next 200 years, churches formed that called themselves Seventh Day Baptist (some independently, some 'daughters') and there are lists of them identifying which joined and which didn’t join the General Conference (for example in Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, volume 2) but none became independent Sabbatarian groups.
The later 19th century origins of Seventh-day Adventists and Church of God Seventh-Day groups have separate histories. It seems that no-one yet has carefully researched the relationships between SDBs and the emerging 19th century Sabbath-keeping Church of God groups. There may have been an SDB ‘association of churches’ in the American Midwest in areas which some participating churches were or eventually became ‘Church of God’ congregations. Many American churches took part in a regional association but never joined the SDB Conference. Internationally there has often been cross-fertilisation of Sabbatarian groups - often described differently by believers and historians.
But to return to the book and its direct concerns...
Ronald Angelo Johnson of the Department of History at Texas State University is better placed to judge the work academically. His review in Baptist History and Heritage, Summer 2018, shows he was clearly impressed: ‘The study exhibits an incomparable grasp of denominational historiography…’. His conclusion?
‘The distinctive life of the Seventh Day Baptist Church, the volume’s diverse collection of records, and Thorngate’s impressively details footnotes will inform future histories of the church and the city…’
A powerful recommendation.
See more at https://leonjlyell.blogspot.com/2019/....
Displaying 1 of 1 review