Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

The antimission controversy was the largest of a host of theological fracases among Baptists in the antebellum era. Baptists also suffered defections by the followers of Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ, or Churches of Christ, who rejected the Baptists’ requirement of a conversion testimony prior to baptism. Campbell asked only for a profession of faith in Jesus and implied that baptism secured forgiveness of sins and regeneration of the believer. Campbell also adopted strong antimission views. Entire churches and some Baptist associations went over to the Campbellites, with severe losses in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana. Pro-missionary Baptists perceived the Campbellites and the antimission movement as a conjoined threat, with one Indiana association recalling the “destruction of the two antagonisms—baptismal regeneration . . . on one hand, and antinomian antimissionism on the other. The adverse winds . . . swept over the western churches like the simoon or sirocco, splitting, dividing and rending all before them.”