Featured Black Rock Address

Have y'all read a contemporary work Notes on the Principles and Practices of Baptist Churches by Francis Wayland. Also, we would do well not to conflate Arminianism with Finneyism. Much of what is laid at the door of the first is really the fruits of the teaching of Charles Finney.

 

In part the section on Tract Socities reads

 

Just a reminder that food fights are not tolerated in this forum. Be civil; this is a discussion forum.

 

As to tracts:

Certainly, the main criticism in the address is against the tract societies.

So, yes, the address leaves open a door for tracts ... but the entire tone of its treatment of tracts is dismissive.

So, I think an accurate representation would be that the address condemns tracts in general, while not entirely prohibiting them, and tract societies in all their particulars.

This is in line with the condemnation of seminaries, which they considered attempts to usurp the primacy of the local church and its ministry, as well as the role of the Holy Spirit in preparing ministers.

 

My question is looking at the Address' section on Bible Societies, where did they expect ot procure their Bibles? Only secular for profit publishers?

 

Yes.

Now, I think this is partly a consequence of naivete on the part of the elders. There was only one version of the English Bible, after all, and any American printer could surely reproduce it, and the lowest bid wins.

I am sure they had no idea what an undertaking it was to produce a translation into a non-European language. The first Baptist missionaries -- like Carey and Judson -- considered it part of their mission to translate the Bible into those languages, and it was no easy task because they had to learn the local languages and then develop grammars and dictionaries.

Not to mention that many of them considered that it was presumptuous to even consider such a thing through the means of a society. I would recommend reading Daniel Parker's Address to the Baptist Society (1820), which sets out many of the themes elucidated in the Black Rock Address.

Now, to be sure, the elders who signed the address outline biblical principles, but it is clear that there is more to it than that. They hate the idea of concentration of power and of elites and an ecumenism that threatens the authority of the church.

There is in this section a representative sample of the charges:

Emphasis added.

Now, exactly how one is to produce and distribute Bibles is really beside the point. The ecclesiological and sociological questions are really the ones addressed.

On the ecclesiological side, it is simple. The local church alone has the authority to propagate the gospel.

On the sociological side, the society's proponents were, to put it bluntly, well-off, formally educated Yankees (or at least the coastal elite). They would squeeze the poor, pious frontier folks in order to lay up their treasures on earth, in money as well as public approbation. (This is hard for us to understand today, but the civil religion of the time would lionize those who would seek to propagate the gospel and print the scriptures. And having seen the mess that many Christians have made of trying to marry politics and religion,or of using one to advance the other, the objectors' point should not be dismissed out of hand.)

 

Speaking of the Jefferson\Jackson distrust of centralization. The men lived through the Second Bank of the US controversy.

 

Thanks, Brother Glen. The Black Rock Address should be considered as presenting a crystalization of the differences that had grown up between the Missionary Baptists and the Old School Baptists over the course of many years. As has been pointed out, the North Carolina Declaration (1826) and Parker's address (1820) predate Black Rock. The seeds of discord were planted with the establishment of the Triennial Convention in 1814.

 

I believe Andrew Fuller was the initial planter. His work laid the foundation for William Carey's missionary venture. Which encouraged Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice to launch off to Burma. Rice then boomeranged back to the States to raise support among Baptists for Judson with the Triennial Convention as an out growth.

 

I wouldn't disagree with any of that. I also don't think it's only coincidental that the Black Rock Address followed within a few months the founding of the American Baptist Home Mission Society.

 

From the name, I hazard the ABHMS was a Northern Baptist organization.