Bebbington on Evangelicalism

The Second Great Awakening laid the foundations of the development of present-day religious beliefs and establishments, moral views, and democratic ideals in the United States. Beginning back in late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century,1 this Protestant awakening sought to reach out the un-churched and bring people to a much more personal and vivid experience of Christianity. Starting on the Southern frontier and soon spreading to the Northeast, the Second Great Awakening has also been associated as a response against the growing liberalism in religion - skepticism, deism, and rational Christianity.2 Although the movement is well-known to be

A Research Paper on the “The Contribution of Baptists in the Struggle for Religious Freedom”

Between 1820 and 1860, Americans constructed 40,000 new churches compared to the 10,000 they constructed in the 40 years before 1820. At the end of the revival period, ”one-third of all Americans attended church regularly.”(P.400) Many of the early revival preachers embraced Christian evangelicalism, the established groups sought to take advantage of the popular enthusiasm to build their particular denominations. Methodists and the Baptists established themselves as leading American denominations as a result of the Second Great Awakening. The two faiths had a mutual sense of affinity with regard to doctrine, but the Baptists created a radically decentralized hierarchy that empowered local ministers and individual churches.

23. Great Awakening – a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America

In the article, Baptists and the Ecumenical Movement by John Briggs, the role and history of Baptists in their engagement with the Ecumenical Movement is discussed. This article critique will summarize the main points of the article, as well as look at the strengths and weaknesses. The conclusion of this critique will determine the overall effectiveness of the article itself.

America’s economic success brought about a series of societal and cultural changes which impacted many aspects of citizens lives, ranging from family life, gender roles, social class, and religion. At the time of the Second Great Awakening, Americans turned to religious revivalists to provide them with resolutions to these fundamental problems facing the United States. While most of these revivalists preached of constructive changes, Johnson and Wilentz highlight the dangers behind our nation’s tolerance of fundamentalists, enthusiasts and visionaries of all sorts. They display our nation's susceptibility to volatile cults and revivals. Motivated by his desire to protect the “ancient truth” and "Despite all of his protestations of faith, [Matthews] was violating the most basic precepts of evangelical manhood, with his unsteady work habits, his self-glorification, and his domestic tyranny" (Johnson and Wilentz

Not to be outdone were the Louisiana Baptist which were evangelizing whites and Negroes all over the

American churches’ overemphasized on individualism, inadequate social theory and rejecting ecclesiology. According to Goen, it failed to provide a proper leadership in the issue of slavery, as a result, it forced the nation to turn to politics in order to confront this slavery issue, which in fact also led to war.1

Existing in this book are fifteen essays, all written by Flynt, and all are relative to the South, religion, and diversity. His essays review southern history, politics, southern regionalism, evangelicalism, traditionalism, fundamentalism, social history, labor history, two case studies; one on the Southern Baptists in Appalachia and of modernization and community; the second one of twentieth-century politics and religion in Florida. Asserts the complexity of social issues and the reforms Baptists felt were necessary to change. He expounds a minister’s battle within a church to not display the American flag because of the death involved behind it and to not be willing for his church life to be separated from his personal convictions. Flynt

Peter Randolph, too, presented the durable linkage between African-Americans, especially during slavery. Their alliance was characterized by creating the so called, “plantation churches” whenever they could not attend the actual church services. By doing so, they could simply gather together, remember their traditions, dance, sing, recite their prayers, sorrows or play banjo. All those familiar activities were helping them hold on to their culture, refine their identity and avoid the “Social Death” or “Cultural Genocide” they were subjected to. Similarly, creating the AME Church, along with following churches, such as the Ethiopian Church of Jesus Christ, was a method of showing to the society that the African history and beliefs are not forgotten.

The Making of the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. A. J. Smith Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008.

David Edwin Harrell, Jr.’s “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century” as well as “The Sectional Origins of the Churches of Christ” magnificently provide readers with a thoroughly researched historical context relevant to Southern religious history in particular. In the former article, Harrell discusses, “At the heart of the myth of the garden,” or the agrarian myth, “was the conviction that rural life was superior to urban life.” For many in the Christian Church, Harrell demonstrates that they sought to initiate the “millennial hope” via the garden myth ideology, but in time, “The most fervent millennialists in the movement by the end of the century were the supporters of the new industrial order. Many still believed that the American farmer was a specially prepared instrument of God, but it was perfectly obvious that he was neither gaining in influence nor improving his status in society.” Harrell, elsewhere, delved further into this urban versus rural idea, and how it, along with class and geographical contentions, affected the schism that divided the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) into two major factions, one conservative, leading to the “Church of Christ,” and the other liberal, retaining the Disciples of Christ name. As helpful as Harrell’s article on sectionalism is, he also explained how Virginia was a bit of an anomaly in the South, where liberals “won virtually all of the churches,” when

In 1845, a group of men met in Augusta, Georgia to organize the Southern Baptist Convention, “to promote Foreign and Domestic Missions and other important objects connected with the Redeemer’s Kingdom,” among Baptist churches in the South. Part of the strategy to promote domestic missions was to create the Domestic Mission Board which would be located in Marion, AL with the initial delegated tasks of developing and executing religious education for blacks in the South and “to aid the present effort, to establish the Baptist cause in the city of New Orleans.”

The greater part of evangelical Christians are no longer in North America. The majority world has just as much if not more missionary activity than North America. The North American Church needs to form partnerships not dictatorships. Finally, Borthwick weaves throughout the book the idea that the North American Church has something to learn from the majority world Church.

In Baptist history there has always been differences in doctrine. This has unfortunately resulted, at times, to separate believers from one another. This can be evident from comparing two American Baptist confessions. The most notable difference in doctrine between The Philadelphia Confession of 1742 and A Treatise on the Faith of the Free Will Baptists, 1834 and 1948 is the doctrine of Calvinism versus free-will. The Philadelphia Confession supported Calvinism and the Free Will Baptists supported Arminianism. A closer look at these two confessions show that throughout Baptist history certain doctrines remain constant while others are debated and cause separation of believers. However, this has not stopped the Gospel message to be preached