Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

During the period from the end of the American Revolution to the onset of America’s sectional crisis in the 1840s, Baptists (along with Methodists, Presbyterians, and the Churches of Christ) proved zealous and flexible enough to keep pace with the booming settlement in the trans-Appalachian West. From upstate New York to the territories of the new Southwest (Alabama to Texas), Baptist associations monitored settlement patterns of Anglo pioneers (many of whom brought slaves along) and commissioned preachers and missionaries “to travel into new places where the Gospel was likely to flourish,” as Baptist historian Robert Baylor Semple noted. In an era of dramatic population shifts, “the spoils would go to those who were prepared to be mobile, and who had a powerful religious message to trade,” as one writer put it. Some Baptists, as in the case of the early Ohio and Mississippi settlers, were among the first Anglo pioneers and opened churches wherever they went. Because Baptist elders and pastors were not required to have college educations at the time, there was a ready supply of pastoral candidates whose primary qualification was zeal for the gospel. Churches in established areas saw revivals, too, but what is most striking is the way that Baptists’ passion for evangelism helped build entrepreneurial church organizations that moved west with the frontier. They also won the allegiance of growing numbers of African Americans as slavery spread into new regions of the South. Fr...