Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

In 1826, Lawrence crafted the Kehukee Association’s declaration, which one historian regards as the “beginnings of antimission schism and the Primitive Baptists.” The New York Telescope, a chief outlet for antimission writing, prefaced the declaration with a Bible passage describing the Beast of Revelation, with a pointed implication about the missionary societies. The Kehukee Association not only deplored the work of the missionary agencies but also declared “NON-FELLOWSHIP with all such societies and proceedings, and with all churches who hold members” of them. The association banned any member of a missionary society from joining its churches and prohibited any “missionary preacher or beggar” from addressing its congregations. The same went for members of tract and Bible societies. The association also denounced “theological seminaries” as unbiblical, calling their representatives “agents of Anti-Christ.” Echoing Daniel Parker’s critique, it exhorted slave owners to “first learn their own negroes to read the Bible, who have sweated and toiled for the very money perhaps they are giving to others.”