Primitive Baptists and the American religious imagination

rlvaughn · May 21, 2021

Brother Glen, tyndale1946, asks to help out in creating a thread on a dissertation by Joshua Aaron Guthman, titled “What I am ’tis hard to know: Primitive Baptists, the Protestant self, and the American religious imagination” (Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008). The title comes from an old hymn once popular among many Baptists, but perhaps now mainly confined in use to Primitive Baptists, other Old School Baptists, and Sacred Harp singers:

I am a stranger here below,
And what I am ’tis hard to know;
I am so vile, so prone to sin,
I fear that I’m not born again.

There is not a direct link that pulls up the dissertation, but you can go to THIS PAGE and click to Download the PDF. It is set as public, so anyone can download and read it at no charge.

Glen’s recommendation said:

It is 220 pages and well worth the read...I recommend you download and read it...What surprised me toward the end of the dissertation is a well known musical performer, who also was a Primitive Baptist and there is quite a piece on him...I won’t let the cat out of the bag...
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Abstract said:

Though forged in the fires of the early nineteenth-century evangelical revivals, Primitive Baptists became the most significant opponents of the burgeoning antebellum evangelical movement. As Calvinists who despised missionaries, Sunday schools, Bible tract societies, and the other accouterments of evangelical Protestantism, the Primitives expressed none of the evangelicals’ certainty of salvation. To understand why the Primitives fought evangelicalism, why they secured victory in parts of the South, and why they ultimately lost out, we need to come to grips with the deeply personal nature of their struggle. Theirs was a fight over many things – doctrine, the influence of money in the church, ministerial authority, local autonomy, and sundry other matters – all of which registered firstly and most dramatically on the personal level. This dissertation demonstrates that an approach centered on the relationship between Primitive Baptist faith and selfhood offers the most compelling explanation of how the Primitives’ personal spiritual crises animated wide-ranging battles over religious doctrine, cultural authority, and social class in a changing American South.
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Related, in that it is about Primitive Baptists, while looking for Guthman’s dissertation, I also found this one:
“There Is A Gnawing Worm Under The Bark Of Our Tree Of Liberty: Anti-Mission Baptists, Religious Liberty, and Local Church Autonomy” (John Lindbeck, University of Mississippi, Master of Arts thesis, 2013)

It cannot be concealed that there is a gnawing worm under the bark of our tree of liberty, that seeks to sap our civil and religious rights. Mean suspicion is ridiculous; but manly jealousy is noble. Words are flexible things; it is principles and measures that characterize the man. John Leland, in 1830
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tyndale1946 · May 21, 2021

Thank you for the help Brother Robert and I look forward to reading the one you found and posted... Brother Glen

rlvaughn · May 21, 2021

A quote from Guthman, “What I am ’tis hard to know,” p. 5:

Primitive Baptists in the antebellum South struggled with missionary adversaries and with an austere set of beliefs that put them at odds both with evangelicals and their own fraught consciences. As uncompromising believers who, as one historian put it, were “more Calvinistic…than Calvin himself,” the Primitive Baptists held two core beliefs from which flowed all other matters of worldly and otherworldly affairs. They knew that God had decided, even before He created the world, who among the planet’s later inhabitants would be saved and who would be damned. And they knew as well that not only could they never know or understand God’s decision, they could do nothing to alter it. This put them far indeed from the more optimistic strains of evangelical Protestantism sweeping the early republic.

tyndale1946 · May 22, 2021

rlvaughn said: ↑

A quote from Guthman, “What I am ’tis hard to know,” p. 5:

Primitive Baptists in the antebellum South struggled with missionary adversaries and with an austere set of beliefs that put them at odds both with evangelicals and their own fraught consciences. As uncompromising believers who, as one historian put it, were “more Calvinistic…than Calvin himself,” the Primitive Baptists held two core beliefs from which flowed all other matters of worldly and otherworldly affairs. They knew that God had decided, even before He created the world, who among the planet’s later inhabitants would be saved and who would be damned. And they knew as well that not only could they never know or understand God’s decision, they could do nothing to alter it. This put them far indeed from the more optimistic strains of evangelical Protestantism sweeping the early republic.
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After reading the one you posted Brother Robert, I especially like this comment from Elder Joshua Lawrence

It appears to me very plainly, that the present movements of the priests are like a man breaking a yoke of oxen—first to coax them gently—then the rope—then coax, rub, feed, and stroke—then the yoke—then gently the cart—then a light load—then as much as they can bear—then more, galled necks or not, go they must, or the whip they must have, without mercy or compassion. Just so are the priests doing. Oh ye sons of liberty; ye children of wild oxen independence, to rove where you please, and graze on pastures of happiness according to your own liking, they are coaxing, persuading, begging, and putting on the yoke and cart, by large sums of money, theological and Sunday schools, combined with the press and priestly influence—and I tell you, these worms will cut the root of our independence, and if they get law on their side, they will load the cart with tithes, to the galling of your hearts, and you must go, or pop goes the whip

This is my Primitive Baptist mindset... The LORD!.. Always beats the preacher to the creature!... Brother Glen

Acts 13:47 For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.

13:48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

Squire Robertsson · May 22, 2021

rlvaughn said: ↑

A quote from Guthman, “What I am ’tis hard to know,” p. 5:

Primitive Baptists in the antebellum South struggled with missionary adversaries and with an austere set of beliefs that put them at odds both with evangelicals and their own fraught consciences. As uncompromising believers who, as one historian put it, were “more Calvinistic…than Calvin himself,” the Primitive Baptists held two core beliefs from which flowed all other matters of worldly and otherworldly affairs. They knew that God had decided, even before He created the world, who among the planet’s later inhabitants would be saved and who would be damned. And they knew as well that not only could they never know or understand God’s decision, they could do nothing to alter it. This put them far indeed from the more optimistic strains of evangelical Protestantism sweeping the early republic.
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I came to think much of the reaction to Calvinism is rooted in a reaction to this mindset.

Primitive Baptists and the American religious imagination

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