Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

Although John was the patriarch of the Parker clan, his son Daniel left a deeper imprint on Baptist history. By the time that Daniel joined his family in Texas—he had settled farther east, thereby avoiding the Fort Parker attack—he had already become one of the leading Baptist voices against missionary societies. As we have seen, grumbling against the missions agencies began to appear among Baptists in the 1810s, as some argued that such extracongregational societies did not appear in Scripture, and that their representatives seemed awfully concerned with raising money. Historians have also attributed the rise of these antimission “Primitive” Baptists to the antielitist mood of the Jacksonian era and the strength of populist opinion in the wiregrass South (south Alabama and south Georgia, as well as the Florida Panhandle). In these and other impoverished areas of the southern states, the Primitives flourished.