During the late 1800s and early 1900s, several unity movements emerged among Free Will Baptists in the South. Two of these have just recently come to light and are briefly described in this article for the first time. Robert Vaughn and I have written the story in full detail for publication later.[1]
Some historians suggest that such movements were the fruit of the Second Great Awakening. One such was the merger of the Free Will Baptists of the North with the Northern Baptists, completed in 1910-11. That story is well known.
The Southern Baptist Association, 1876-90?
The man who led in this movement—Bushrod Washington “B. W.” Nash—has received a little attention in North Carolina, but the organization he promoted has received none.[2] Nash was a Union Baptist, a small denomination founded in Virginia by James W. Hunnicutt in about 1841. Nash was sent from there to North Carolina in 1858. He quickly gained influence among the Alfred Moore faction of the original General Free Will Baptist (FWB) Conference of North Carolina and convinced them to join the Union Baptists, who also held “free will” doctrine.[3]
Hunnicutt and Nash aimed to achieve a union of all “liberal Baptists” of the South, that is to say all Baptists holding to free grace, free will, and free communion. Beginning April 30, 1859, there was a convention for this purpose at the Providence Church in Muscogee County, Georgia, a church of the Chattahoochee United Baptist Association (not long thereafter to become the Chattahoochee Association of Free Will Baptists).
The United Baptists of Georgia apparently called the meeting and were interested in uniting with like-minded believers. Two years before, in 1857, they had contacted the original conference of Free Will Baptists in North Carolina about the possibility of a unity organization but had been rebuffed.[4] The 1859 meeting was more successful, involving Union Baptists, United Baptists, and Free Will Baptists.[5] Ellis Gore, founder of the Mount Moriah FWB Association in Alabama, was present and was elected moderator; Hunnicutt was clerk. This meeting, however, did not lead to any ongoing organization. The looming Civil War put all such efforts to rest for the next several years.
By the end of the Civil War in 1865, Nash had become the leader of the Union Baptists and of efforts toward the union of liberal Baptists in the South. In 1873, he began publishing The Baptist Review, first in LaGrange and later in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He also visited various associations of churches to promote the cause. He was welcomed among a number of Free Will Baptists, widely scattered. In North Carolina, he was popular in the Cape Fear FWB Conference.
In 1876, then, the Southern Baptist Association (no relation to the modern Southern Baptist Convention) was formed at a meeting in Deep Creek Church of the Chattahoochee United FWB Association in Emmanuel County, Georgia.[6] From 1876 to 1883, the association met annually[7]
1877: Friendship Church, Wayne County, NC.[8]
1878: New Hope Church, Williamsburg County, SC.[9]
1879: Mount Moriah FWB Church, Pickens County, AL.
1880: Ebenezer Church, Tatnall County, GA.[10]
1881: Concord Church, Columbus County, NC.[11]
1882: Union Grove Church, Henry County, AL.[12]
1883: Union Church, Lee County, MS.[13]
The 1884 session was scheduled for Bristol Baptist Church (Tennessee-Virginia) but apparently did not convene.
There were apparently some efforts to keep the organization going, perhaps as late as 1900 or shortly thereafter. One such effort is referenced in the minutes of the Chattahoochee Association for 1889, recommending “a general convention of the Free-Will Baptist Association[s] in the South to meet in Columbus, Ga.,” to be announced in The Baptist Review. Whether this was seen as a session of the Southern Baptist Association is uncertain, but it met in November 1889 and Nash attended.[14]
During the short existence of the Southern Baptist Association, Free Will Baptists were the largest part of its membership. Even so, the organization was never all that large; in 1883, according to Nash, there were 121 churches, 102 ministers, and 4,440 members represented in the association.
“Southern Unity” and the General Association, 1889-99?
As the Southern Baptist Association was dwindling, a competitor unity movement developed, led by a pair of ministers in Middle Tennessee. I say “competitor” because Nash was aware of this effort and resisted it vigorously.
The two ministers were John L. Welch, Sr.,[15] and A. D. Williams. Welch was originally ordained in the Stone Association of Christian Baptists. He had relocated westward and ministered in the bounds of the Cumberland FWB Association. Among other things, he persuaded the Stone Association and Cumberland Association to adopt parts of the other’s name, so that both became “Free Will Christian Baptists.”
Alvin Dighton Williams was a well-known minister among the Free Will Baptists of the North. Born in Pennsylvania, he served churches in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio, and West Virginia, subsequently relocating to Kenesaw, Nebraska. In mid-1889, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and devoted his energies to promoting the unity of liberal Baptists of the South. Apparently he served the North Nashville FWB Church (now Cofer’s Chapel) as pastor for a short period. In August 1889, a Nashville paper carried this notice: “At an unusually full meeting of the First, or North Nashville Freewill Baptist Church, last Wednesday evening, Rev. A. D. Williams, D. D., was elected pastor, over Rev. J. L. Welsh [sic]. Dr. Williams is the local manager of The Christian Herald.”[16]
Both Welch and Williams began publishing papers to advance the cause of unity. Welch’s was The Free Baptist Enterprise, apparently begun in June of 1889. Williams’s was The Christian Herald, begun not long thereafter. Within a few more weeks they had merged the two publications into one, The Christian Herald and Enterprise. It was under the editorial management of Williams, Welch, and J. W. Lucas of East Tennessee—as reported in The Morning Star for October 17, 1889.
Williams travelled to promote the paper and unity. By the fall, he and Welch and their publication had enlisted enough support that a convention was announced. Several other leaders joined in the call to meet, representing the following associations:
Cumberland, Union, New American, and Stone in Tennessee;
New Union Association of United Baptists in Tennessee;
Tennessee River in Tennessee and Alabama;
Clinch Valley in Tennessee and Virginia;
Mount Moriah and Vernon in Alabama;
Ogeechee and Chattahoochee in Georgia;
Texas in Texas; and
Old Mount Zion in Arkansas.
The meeting was announced as being for all “Southern white Baptists who believe in free will, free salvation and free communion, on the basis of uniting on things in which we are agreed and of leaving points of difference to the several local bodies.”[17] The meeting would be at the North Nashville FWB Church in Tennessee, December 5-8, 1889. The announcement appeared in a number of newspapers across the South.[18]
While we have no minutes of the meeting, an organization was formed, named the “General Association of Baptists, believing in Free Will, Free Salvation, and Free Communion.” The organization met again in 1890, in Hartselle, Alabama, but the attendance was disappointingly small. How long the association lasted after that is not entirely clear. Williams had moved on to Indiana to head up, successfully, the General Baptists’ efforts to found a college at Oakland City. He returned to his home in Nebraska at the end of the 1893-94 school term and died there on December 31, 1894.
There are a couple of references—in a Nashville newspaper and the Cumberland Association minutes—to sessions of the General Association in 1896 and 1897. At that time, however, the organization seems to have included Tennessee Free Will Baptists only—in 1896 consisting of 102 churches with 5,742 members. Interestingly, the 1898 minutes of the Randall movement General Conference include a report by Field Secretary H. M. Ford that he had attended two sessions of the General Association, apparently 1897 and 1898. Finally, the 1899 minutes of the Union Association in East Tennessee refer to an upcoming meeting of the “General Association,” so perhaps the association lasted that long. More information may yet come to light.
Conclusion
Still another unity movement in the South began in 1895 when Thomas Peden of Ohio led in the formation of a triennial General Conference, intended to be the “true” General Conference (instead of the General Conference of the Randall movement). I have told this story in Little Known Chapters in Free Will Baptist History. This organization continued to meet through 1910, and its success might have contributed to the failure of one or both of the organizations described above.
After this General Conference did not survive past 1910,[19] two broad organizations came into existence: the Cooperative General Association (mostly in the West), in 1916, and the General Conference (mostly in the Southeast), in 1921. These, in turn, merged into the National Association of Free Will Baptists in 1935—a truly long-lasting unity movement.
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[1]If a second volume of Little Known Chapters in Free Will Baptist History is published, I will include the full “chapter” in that volume.
[2]He is not thought well of there, primarily because his efforts toward unity resulted in the loss of a number of FWB churches to the movement led by Alexander Campbell.
[3]The old North Carolina General Conference had split over whether the conference had the right to require the churches to reject members who were Free Masons. The Alfred Moore faction had wanted the conference to legislate this, while the James Moore faction had stood for the right of the churches to decide for themselves. The James Moore faction continued to remain loyal Free Will Baptists. For the articles of faith of the Union Baptists, see James W. Hunnicutt, A Summary of the Doctrines Held and Maintained by the Union Baptists: to which is annexed a recantation of infant baptism (Richmond, VA: P. D. Bernard, 1942).
[4]See T. F. Harrison and J. M. Barfield, History of the Free Will Baptists of North Carolina (W. E. Moye, 1897), 245-46, 248.
[5]According to Nash, some (unidentified) General Baptists were also involved.
[6]B. W. Nash, “The Southern Baptist Association,” Weekly Transcript and Messenger, May 6, 1887, 8, said it was in the Chattahoochee; I cannot confirm this.
[7]The list (but not the footnotes) is from B. W. Nash, “The Southern Baptist Association,” The Baptist Review, January 30, 1905, 2-3.
[8]There was a Friendship FWB Church (changed to Casey’s Chapel in 1893) in the Cape Fear Conference in this county at this time; it seems likely that this was the church where the association met.
[9]The New Hope church was probably the one dismissed in 1878 from the South Carolina FWB Conference so that it could join the Southern Baptist Association.
[10]Probably the Ebenezer FWB Church near Glennville, GA.
[11]This might not have been a Free Will Baptist church; it might have been in the Piny Grove or the Mt. Zion associations, both Baptist in North Carolina and involved with Nash.
[12]Probably the Union Grove FWB Church belonging to the Southeastern FWB Conference.
[13]There was a Union Church in that county at the time, but I cannot identify its denomination.
[14]The Goldsboro Headlight, November 6, 1889, 5.
[15]This was the father of the John L. Welch Jr. still remembered as active in the formation of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, for whom Welch College has been named.
[16]The Daily American, August 23, 1889, 2. “J. L. Welsh” is John L. Welch, Sr.
[17]EDITOR’S NOTE: After emancipation, most black Baptists sought separation from their previous mixed churches. Black and white Baptist organizations sometimes diverged doctrinally after this parting. In the end, an unfortunate division developed between white and black Baptists that did not begin to heal until the mid-twentieth century.
[18]See, for example, the Daily American, November 27, 1889, 8; The Daily Arkansas Gazette, November 28, 1889, 1.
[19]There were some regional unity organizations at about the same time, all short-lived. These included the Southwestern FWB Convention (c. 1901-1915) and the United Association of Mountain FWBs (1908-?). There was even a Georgia State Convention of Liberal Baptists (c. 1890-97?).
September 6, 2018
Thanks for the information. I am always amazed at the effort these believers used to build the Kingdom. Travel at that time would have finished many of us. Resistance would have likely caused us to falter. Poor longterm results would discourage. And like many today, local success could mean more than any reward from that sort of effort. How can a man profit from vainglory if he has to share it with others? Thankfully there were many who unselfishly labored with no chance of recognition in this world. Actually, these types of labors should not be too difficult for those that are ‘strangers and pilgrims on the earth’. Keep these reminders before us; we need the encouragement.