Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

The key figure in exporting the Separate Baptist movement to the South was Shubal Stearns of Tolland, Connecticut. Stearns followed a familiar path to Separate Baptist convictions. He experienced conversion under George Whitefield’s preaching, grew dissatisfied with the local Congregational church, and helped organize a Separate congregation. By the mid-1740s, Stearns had become an activist for religious freedom for the Separates, and he signed petitions to the Connecticut General Assembly asking for liberty of worship under the 1689 Toleration Act.44 In 1751 (shortly before Isaac Backus accepted believer’s baptism about ninety miles away in Massachusetts), Stearns and most of his extended family were converted to Baptist principles under a visiting preacher, Wait Palmer. Palmer helped Stearns organize a Separate Baptist congregation in Tolland and ordained Stearns with the assistance of the provocative Joshua Morse. But Stearns did not stay long at the church, as he and his family left in 1754 to bring the Separate Baptist faith to the South. Why did Stearns leave? Early Baptist historian Robert Baylor Semple chalked it up to the Separate Baptists’ mystical piety: “Mr. Stearns and most of the Separates had strong faith in the immediate teachings of the Spirit. . . . Mr. Stearns, listening to some of these instructions from Heaven, conceived himself called upon by the Almighty to move far to the westward to execute a great and extensive work.” Stearns had also likely learn...