The Rise of the Modern Mission System Among the Baptists
Since formal opposition to doctrinal and practical departures from the faith of the Church would not occur until after the heresy has become publicly manifested, the oft-repeated charge that the Baptists had not opposed missionary operations until near the end of the eighteenth century, is ridiculous. The new system was not introduced, anywhere in the world, until 1792, in England. In America, the equivalent of this system was introduced about twenty-two years later, and faced opposition nearly as soon as it made its existence known.
Aside from the privations of the new country and dangers from both Indians and wild beasts, the question of modern "foreign missions" was the greatest trial to face the Baptists after their arrival in Illinois. The Baptists had always claimed to be a missionary people, according to the Bible design, but they had never been a people governed by or operating through "BOARDS," or separate "SOCIETIES." Through all the centuries of their existence, the Baptists had never joined with other denominations in their men-made schemes to proselyte the heathen, so-called. But trouble began, on October 2, 1792, with the formation of the FIRST Baptist missionary society in the world, in the "back parlor of Beebe Wallis" in Kettering, England, by Andrew Fuller (consistent with his heretical views on the atonement, which were opposed by contemporary John Gill) and William Carey, in the Northamptonshire Association. Missionaries from this English breed, William Carey and William Ward, converted and baptized Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson, in the fall of 1812, at Calcutta, India, (Judson and Rice were natives of Massachusetts, but had been serving as Congregationalist missionaries). But rather than uniting with the English Baptist Mission, Luther Rice soon returned to America to form a similar Society. On May 18, 1814, he organized the Baptist Triennial Convention, at Philadelphia, through delegates from various places. The administrative board of this General Convention was called the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions. Correspondence was sought with about one hundred Baptist associations, many of which Luther Rice visited personally, raising funds by collections wherever he was allowed to do so. Meanwhile, Judson removed to Rangoon, Burma, and was soon found under the patronage of this Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States.
As the activities of this Board became known, and as great numbers of Baptists in New England and the eastern states fell victim to it, the strong opposition of sound Baptists began to be expressed more and more publicly. Elder George Tillman, and others, opposed Luther Rice's request for correspondence with the Concord Association of Tennessee, in 1815, the first year Rice began to seek support for the Board. Elder Daniel Parker opposed it again, the following year in the same association; and in 1817, Parker confronted Rice, face to face, publicly, at the Concord Association. Later that year, Parker moved to southeastern Illinois, and united with the Lamotte Church, and became pastor of Little Village Church, a short distance south of his new home. In 1818, Little Village Church presented a query to the Wabash District Association, to gain the voice of the churches as to whether the modern mission system was scriptural.
The modern mission system was opposed in other places as well. The New River Association of Virginia is one such example, as their minutes for 1816 show: "Item 12th. A request from Bethel Church for opening a regular correspondence with the Board of Foreign Missions - after considerable altercation, finding it could not be carried into effect, liberty was obtained to withdraw the request." - Minutes of the New River Association, 1816 fall session, held at Bethel meetinghouse, Wythe County, Virginia, October 1816.
In 1819 and 1820, two relatively short books or treatises were written, published and widely distributed, which had great influence on the Baptists on the western frontier, on this subject. Both books are still available, and show the true position taken, at the very time of the conflict on this subject, by those who opposed the setting up of a Missionary System, including the "Baptist Board of Foreign Missions," and the "Home Mission Society."
The first, Thoughts on Missions, by Elder John Taylor, of Frankfort, Kentucky, published in 1819, is a vivid account, by an eye witness, of the means and measures employed by Luther Rice. Taylor also wrote A History of Ten Churches, etc., in which is given his valuable account of the beginning and progress of the Great Revival of 1800. Here is illustrated the amazing contrast between a true spiritual revival, based on the preaching of salvation by grace, true repentance, and the work of the Spirit, as opposed to a revival based on the human efforts of the modern mission system which Taylor opposed! In 1827, Taylor also wrote a book describing the origin of the Campbellite heresy and system which divided the Baptist Church again, to which he had been a first-hand witness.
The second work opposing the modern mission system, A Public Address to the Baptist Society, and Friends of Religion in General, on the Principle and Practice of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States of America, by Elder Daniel Parker, of Illinois, published in 1820, was one of the most influential books ever written by a Baptist in the midwest. In 1823 Parker issued another pamphlet, called Plain Truth, and in 1824, a third, called The Author's Defense, as the battle over the modern mission system intensified.
These books struck a death-blow at the very existence of the modern mission work: the associations which had at first begun to correspond with this Baptist Board of Foreign Missions "smelled the New England rat," and not only severed correspondence, but also declared non-fellowship for it. Many other Associations, as they were organized, followed their example. The missionary response to these books, and to the widespread opposition to their measures, came in the form of a General Circular Letter to the Baptists of All Parties, written by John Mason Peck, and approved by the General Convention which met at Winchester, Illinois, in 1832. To read this Circular,
Click here .
John Mason Peck: The Leading Advocate of Modern Missions
The chief advocate of the new system of "foreign missions," in Illinois, was Rev. John Mason Peck, a Connecticut yankee, and a close cohort of Rev. Luther Rice. Peck's journals were published posthumously as his Memoirs, by Rufus Babcock, another contemporary. They reveal the nature of his activities among the Baptists in Illinois and Missouri. He was a hireling of the Board system, a child of missionary societies in New York and Massachusetts; and had authority to offer monetary support of those societies, to men who were willing to preach the "gospel" for hire. Peck came to the St. Louis, Mo./Alton, Ill., area in December 1817. Though naturally gifted, well educated and a polished speaker, he signally failed to convert the existing Baptist churches in the Illinois Association, or its correspondence, to his missionary views; and was therefore compelled to start a so-called Baptist work virtually "from scratch," building it on excluded members from orderly Illinois Baptist churches, and immigrants who had ties with the mission system in the east, and other places.
