Religion

THE GREAT AWAKENING IN NORTH CAROLINA, 1740-1775: THE BAPTIST PHASE

BY DAVID T. MORGAN, JR.^*

[Vol. 45 (1968), 264-283]

The fervent religious revivals which swept America in the middle of the eighteenth century and which later acquired the name of the Great Awakening can best be defined as an intercolonial evangelical movement that was part of the universal evangelical revival fostered by German Pietism in that period. The fundamental ideas of Pietism included vital piety, the mystic union of the believer with God, the enthronement of emotion upon its rightful seat, and a thoroughgoing reformation of morals. Among those profoundly influenced by the German Pietists was George Whitefield, an Anglican minister who became the most important figure in the Great Awakening.

Revival fires flamed in New Jersey under the ministry of Theodore Frelinghuysen, a Dutch Reformed minister, as early as 1720. In 1734 a wave of religious enthusiasm passed through Massachusetts as a result of the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. But by 1739 religious fervor was on the wane, even on the brink of extinction. At that time, October 30, 1739, George Whitefield, journeying to the colonies for the second time, landed at Lewes, Delaware. Through his powerful preaching the smoldering embers of the earlier revivals were fanned until a conflagration spread over nearly all of the colonies.

Unquestionably the Great Awakening was a popular movement. Denominations supporting it grew, and grew according to the measure of support given. The fundamental principle of the movement was the necessity of personal conversion. Promoters of the Awakening assumed and preached that many church members and some ministers were unconverted. Religious excitement was the most striking characteristic of the movement, but opponents of the revival greatly exaggerated when describing the bodily agitations which sometimes resulted from the strong emotional appeal of the evangelists. Some of the awakeners engaged in arousing excitement, while others were not inclined to do so.¹

The role of George Whitefield in the Great Awakening can scarcely be overemphasized. Concerning his important place in the movement, Frederick Leonard Chapell has said:

But as every great movement has its representative character, the Great Awakening had its pre-eminent preacher, George Whitefield—than whom, I believe, a greater of his kind is not to be found in the whole church. He is emphatically the representative man of the great revival of the eighteenth century. He was an exceptional character who soared above all party lines or ecclesiastical boundaries.²

The effects of his powerful ministry were felt in every corner of almost every colony. Thousands upon thousands flocked to hear him.

David Garrick, the English actor, said that Whitefield was able to melt an audience simply by pronouncing the word “Mesopotamia,” and declared that he would freely give a hundred guineas if he could utter “O!” like the great evangelist.³

Upon his second arrival in America in 1739 the people of the northern colonies went in unprecedented numbers to hear Whitefield preach. After proclaiming the gospel to countless auditors the evangelist moved southward toward Savannah, Georgia. En route he traveled through North Carolina, taking nearly two weeks to do so. He preached in several places in the province, but he experienced nothing like the astounding success that he had enjoyed farther to the north.

Whitefield’s carefully kept journal gives a clear indication of his warm, but not overly enthusiastic, reception in North Carolina. On Wednesday, December 19, 1739, he noted that he and his party were “affectionately received by Colonel O.....n, in North Carolina.” The host did not discover who Whitefield was for several hours, but when he was informed, he “was so rejoiced that he could not tell how to express his satisfaction.”⁴

After passing through “Eden Town” and spending one night at a place called Bell’s Ferry, Whitefield reached Bath on Saturday, December 22. The next day he preached at about noon to nearly a hundred people, which, according to what he had heard, was about five times the number who usually attended the service in Bath. In his journal, he reported:

After sermon, one poor woman came with a full heart, desiring my prayers. I asked her whether she knew Christ; she answered, she had been seeking Him for some time, but wanted to find a minister who had understanding in Divine things. This case is not uncommon. Most that handle the law know not what they say, nor whereof they affirm.⁵

Christmas day, 1739, found Whitefield in “Newborn Town.” There he took the “Holy Sacrament” at the courthouse, but he “mourned much in spirit, to see in what an indifferent manner everything was carried on.” That afternoon he “read prayers and preached,” and the people were “uncommonly attentive, and most were melted to tears.” Whitefield was delighted with the service, for he felt that it was indicative of “an earnest of future and plentiful effusions of God’s Spirit” in North Carolina.⁶

The deeply pious evangelist was incensed when he learned that the minister of the church at New Bern “countenanced a dancing-master, by suffering his own son to be one of his learners.” Whitefield wrote the minister a letter of protest because he was firmly convinced that “such a proceeding must be of dreadful consequence to any, especially a new settled province.”⁷

The slow and relatively uneventful journey through North Carolina continued. In an entry of his journal for Wednesday, December 26, Whitefield recorded that he had baptized two children of strangers during the day’s travel. He lamented the absence of ministers in the province and expressed a desire that God would send forth a John the Baptist to preach and baptize in the wilderness.⁸ On Thursday, December 27, Whitefield wrote that he and his party had stopped at an “ordinary,” and while there he ministered to the “negroes belonging to the house.”⁹

On December 28 Whitefield reached “New Town on the Cape Fear.” He rested until Sunday morning, December 30, when he preached to a group that must have been disappointingly small. He apologetically stated in his journal that the number present was “as many as could be expected at so short a warning.”¹⁰

Whitefield’s journey through North Carolina came to an end on New Year’s day, 1740, for on that day he crossed over into South Carolina.¹¹ By the evidence of his own pen it is clear that Whitefield achieved little in North Carolina as he traveled through in 1739. The spirit of enthusiasm which accompanied his appearance in other colonies did not manifest itself in North Carolina. The multitudes did not rush out to hear him preach. Apparently he felt a keen disappointment at this turn of events, for when recording his impressions of the country he had passed through, he entered in his journal on January 9, 1740:

In North Carolina there is scarcely so much as the form of religion. Two churches were begun, some time since, but neither is finished. There are several dancing—masters, but scarcely one regular settled minister....¹²

These disparaging remarks about North Carolina might well have been an attempt by the evangelist to justify his lack of success.

During the spring of 1745 Whitefield enjoyed an overwhelmingly successful preaching tour through New England. Eventually he made his way south, and was received with great enthusiasm in the Middle Colonies and Virginia. But when the evangelist reached North Carolina the bubble of his spectacular success burst as it had in 1739. He was compelled to write, “In North Carolina, where I stayed too short a time, little was done.”¹³

While other colonies were being shaken mightily by the religious enthusiasm of the 1740’s, North Carolina remained comfortably complacent. Not until 1755 would the Great Awakening become a moving force in that colony, and Whitefield would play no direct part in setting it in motion. The Separate Baptists, born out of Whitefield’s New England revivals and imbued with the spirit of the great evangelist, were destined to give North Carolina its first real taste of the Great Awakening.

When the Great Awakening erupted with great spiritual force in New England, the Baptists there had little to do with it. In all probability they vividly remembered the harsh treatment to which they had been subjected by the Congregationalists, who supported the revival. Despite their failure to support the Awakening the Baptists reaped indirect benefit from it. Many who left the Congregational churches became Baptists. As a result Baptist ranks swelled in New England.¹⁴ The Baptists in the Middle Colonies also began to expand after 1740. Just about the time these old style Baptists began to respond to the touch of religious enthusiasm a new kind of Baptists emerged. True children of the Great Awakening, the latter became known as “Separate Baptists,” while the old-line Baptists acquired the name of “Regular Baptists.”

As previously indicated the Separate Baptists evolved from the Whitefield revivals which shook New England in the 1740’s. They were New Lights, a term applied to all advocates of the Awakening, regardless of denomination, who “separated themselves” from the older churches. As to church government they believed that the power of decision and action in all matters governing the church rested entirely with the individual congregation. Uneducated men were allowed to preach if they seemed to have “such gifts as indicated future usefulness.” They were not Baptists at first, either in name or practice, for they adhered to infant baptism, but they did not reject members who submitted to believer’s baptism.¹⁵

Their departure from their former churches was prompted by a lack of enthusiasm in those churches. In commenting on this point, Semple has said:

The hearts of people being touched by a heavenly flame could no longer relish the dry parish service, conducted, for the most part, as they thought, by a set of graceless mercenaries.¹⁶

Tremendous numbers of New Lights who had “separated themselves” soon drifted into Baptist churches. Probably a preponderance of those who became Baptists were former Congregationalists. Some Baptist churches did not welcome them, while others received them gladly. Many of the churches that received the Separates were captured by the Separate spirit, and there arose a vigorous, fast-growing body of Separate Baptist churches which were vastly different from the older Baptists of New England.¹⁷ When Whitefield was told that the Separates were becoming Baptists, he reportedly said, “My chickens have turned to ducks.”¹⁸

In many ways it was rather natural that the Separates, when finding themselves unable to stand alone, sought refuge among the Baptists. Like Baptists the Separates believed in a regenerate church membership, disliked interchurch control, cherished democratic ideals, favored religious liberty, and represented a discontented element in society. Also, Separates and Baptists held almost identical views of the ministry and ordination.¹⁹

When Whitefield toured Connecticut in 1745 his preaching touched two men quite deeply. One of them was Shubal Stearns, a Congregationalist of Tolland, and the other was Daniel Marshall, an experienced deacon in the Presbyterian church at Windsor. Strangers to each other in 1745 they were soon to be bound together in a cause which would have momentous consequences for the religious life of their time, for they were destined to become the chief instruments in carrying the Great Awakening to the South.²⁰

Shubal Stearns, the son of Shubal and Rebecca Larriford Stearns, was born in Boston in 1706. In his youth he moved with his parents to Connecticut and joined the Congregational church at Tolland. When he heard Whitefield in 1745 he adopted New Light views, became a Separate, and persuaded the New Light members of his church to become a Separate church. Under Stearns’ leadership the church grew steadily until 1751, when it was disrupted by a controversy over infant baptism.²¹ In that year Stearns became acquainted with a New Light Baptist preacher named Wait Palmer. Stearns was quickly convinced of “the futility of infant baptism,” was baptized by Palmer on profession of faith, and on May 20, 1751, was ordained to the Baptist ministry by Palmer and Joshua Morse.²²

Shortly after being baptized Stearns organized a Separate Baptist church in Tolland. His position as pastor was made official by his ordination. He served as the church’s minister until 1754.²³

Daniel Marshall was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1706. At age twenty he embraced Christianity and joined the Presbyterian church. Within a short time he was made a deacon, an office he held for almost twenty years. When thirty-eight years of age Marshall heard “that son of thunder, Rev. George Whitefield, and caught his seraphic fire.” He was so caught up in the enthusiasm and excitement generated by Whitefield that he “rushed up to the head of the Susquehanna, to convert the heathens....” Settling in a town called Onnaquaggy, among the Mohawk Indians, “he exchanged his commodius [sic] buildings, for a miserable hut; his fruitful fields and loaded orchards, for barren desserts [sic]; the luxuries of a well furnished table, for coarse and scanty fare; and numerous civil friends, for rude savages.” Marshall remained at Onnaquaggy for eighteen months, during which time several Indians “became cordially obedient to the gospel.” War among the Indians prompted him to move to Connogig, Pennsylvania. By 1754 he was living near Winchester, Virginia.²⁴

The above account implies that Marshall rushed out to convert the Indians immediately after hearing Whitefield, but such was not the case. Actually he remained in Connecticut for several years before going to Pennsylvania, for in 1748 he married “his second and last wife,” Martha Stearns, sister of Shubal Stearns. His first wife died soon after bearing Marshall’s first child, a boy named Daniel. His second wife was a “helper in the gospel,” and her “zealous co-operation” contributed significantly to her husband’s success. On countless occasions Mrs. Marshall “melted a whole concourse into tears, by her prayers and exhortations.” She gave birth to six sons and two daughters, all of whom were reported to be alive in 1810. Her stepson, Daniel, was also living and “a useful member of society” at that time.²⁵

Shortly after arriving in Virginia in 1754 Marshall became acquainted with a group of Baptists whose church held membership in the Philadelphia Association. After “a close, impartial examination of their faith and order,” he and his wife were baptized. A short time afterward the church issued Marshall a license to preach.²⁶

During the year of 1754 Shubal Stearns came to believe that he was divinely led to move “far to the westward, to execute a great and extensive work.” With a few of his church members he left Connecticut and made his way to Opeckon in Berkeley County, Virginia.²⁷ Whether or not he went there to join his brother-in-law cannot be stated with certainty, but upon finding him they “joined companies” and settled for awhile “on Cacapon” in Hampshire County about thirty miles from Winchester.²⁸

When the “great and extensive work” which Stearns had envisioned failed to materialize in Virginia, he grew restless. Soon the combined parties of Stearns and Marshall moved two hundred miles south to Sandy Creek in Guilford County. Stearns chose the new location because some friends had written him from the area that North Carolinians were eager to hear preaching. He and his party arrived at Sandy Creek in November, 1755. Not long after settling down they organized the Sandy Creek Baptist Church. The total membership of the new church was sixteen. Included in the membership were three preachers, Stearns, Marshall, and Joseph Breed. Neither Marshall nor Breed was ordained.²⁹

Morgan Edwards, the famous Baptist preacher of the Philadelphia Association who visited North Carolina in 1771-1772, described the founding of the Sandy Creek Church as follows:

In 1755 a small company from Connecticut came and settled in the forks of Capefear river at a place called Sandy-creek. they were 16 souls in number, having Shubal Stearns to their minister: these were the beginning of what are commonly, tho’ improperly, called Separat-baptists, who soon spread thro’ the province, to South-Carolina and Georgia, and northward, to Virginia....³⁰

Perhaps Edwards thought that the Baptists of Sandy Creek were “improperly” called Separate Baptists because that group did not use the name themselves. In the light of their historical development, however, the name was not inappropriate.

The Separate Baptists reached North Carolina just a little more than a year after the arrival of Governor Arthur Dobbs. At the time North Carolina was enjoying prosperity and growth. The population was approaching a hundred thousand, about four fifths of which was white. In the central and western counties of the province there were probably twenty to thirty thousand people. The greater part of the inhabitants of the Sandy Creek and surrounding areas were of the Quaker, Moravian, Lutheran, and Presbyterian faiths.³¹

When the Separate Baptists moved into North Carolina they took with them doctrines and practices which were probably altogether different from anything North Carolinians had encountered before. Like true sons of the Great Awakening they laid much stress on personal conversion. “Strong gestures and a singular tone of voice” characterized their preaching. People responded with tears, tremblings, screams, shouts, and acclamations. Many people mocked at the emotional meetings, but scores experienced personal conversion, and the Sandy Creek Church grew to 606 members in less than fifteen years.³²

Stearns and most of his followers had a strong faith in the immediate teachings of the spirit. They were convinced that God gave them clear revelations of his will, and though the revelations were above reason, they would never be contrary to reason.³³

Regular Baptists continuously accused their Separate brethren of Arminian tendencies, but in reality they were moderate Calvinists, a position from which most of them never departed.³⁴ Shubal Stearns was undoubtedly a Calvinist if he wrote the Grassy Creek Church Covenant, as Devin has claimed. The covenant could hardly express a more rigid Calvinist position than when it affirms a belief in “particular election of grace by the predestination of God in Christ, “and the final perseverance of the saints in grace.”³⁵ Some doubt exists as to whether Stearns could have written words so strongly Calvinistic. If he did write them there was a lack of consistency between what he believed and what he practiced. It is indeed difficult to understand how Stearns, or for that matter Whitefield and Edwards before him, could have reconciled an advocacy of unrestricted evangelism with a belief in particular election.

An unusual practice of the Sandy Creek Church was that of having “eldresses” and “deaconesses” as well as elders and deacons. Another extraordinary thing about the Baptists of Sandy Creek Church was their belief in nine Christian rites. Most Baptist groups recognized two ordinances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but the group at Sandy Creek observed these two plus the love feast, laying on of hands, washing feet, anointing the sick, the right hand of fellowship, the kiss of charity, and dedication of children.³⁶

A typical Separate Baptist revival service might well have been like the ones held in the early days of the Grassy Creek Church in Granville County. After the sermon a “suitable hymn” was sung while the preacher went through the congregation shaking hands. An invitation was then extended to all sinners to come and kneel at the front. Prayer was offered for those who responded. Following a time of prayer, singing, and exhortation the meeting was adjourned until the evening, when all who wished reassembled in a private home for preaching or prayer. Ordinarily the night meeting was given over to prayer. In “seasons of religious awakening” the crowds were large and the conversions many. There were occasional outbursts of emotion.³⁷

The burning enthusiasm of the Separates would not permit them to remain confined for long to the area in the forks of the Cape Fear. They launched a program of militant evangelism, and their rapid expansion was nothing less than phenomenal. In practically no time they established churches in present Randolph, Chatham, Orange, Guilford, Davidson, Surry, Montgomery, Anson, and Granville counties. Their ministers went north and south and established churches in Virginia and South Carolina. Eastern North Carolina, even to the coast, early felt the impact of the Separates in their crusade for the souls of men. Two branches of the Sandy Creek Church, New River in present Onslow County and Black River, probably in present Sampson or New Hanover County, were established by 1758. Soon afterward several other Separate churches and branches were conducting regular services in the eastern part of the province.³⁸

In the vanguard of the triumphant march of the Separates were Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall. Stearns seems to have had an almost hypnotic effect on those who heard him preach. According to Semple he “had a very expressive and penetrating eye, and a voice singularly harmonious. His enemies ... would sometimes be captivated by his musical voice.”³⁹ Morgan Edwards, a Regular Baptist, did not appreciate the excessive emotionalism precipitated by Stearns’ preaching, but he was willing to acknowledge the Separate leader as a capable preacher and a man of excellent Christian character. In 1772 Edwards wrote concerning Stearns:

Of learning he had but a small share, yet was pretty well acquainted with books. His voice was musical and strong, which he managed in such a manner as one while, to make soft impressions on the heart, and fetch tears from the eyes in a mechanical way; and anon, to shake the very nerves and throw the animal system into tumults and purturbations [sic]. All the Separate ministers copy after him in tones of voice and actions of body; and some few exceed him. His character was indisputably good, both as a man, a christian and a preacher. In his eyes was something very penetrating, seemed to have meaning in every glance....⁴⁰

Marshall gave Stearns able assistance. Morgan Edwards reportedly called Marshall “a weak man, a stammerer, no scholar.”⁴¹ While it is true that he was not a man of great talent, he was an indefatigable worker. Semple has said, “He sallied out into the adjacent neighborhoods, and planted the Redeemer’s standard in many of the strongholds of Satan.”⁴² Marshall went from place to place “instructing, exhorting, and praying for families, and congregations: whether at a muster, a race, a public market, the open field, an army, or a house of worship; wherever he was able to command attention.”⁴³

Stearns and Marshall made preaching tours of eastern North Carolina, the stronghold of the legally established Anglican Church, within a year or two after they settled at Sandy Creek. The easterners were shocked by the powerful preaching of the Separate enthusiasts. General Baptists, who had organized a church in eastern North Carolina as early as 1727, had been warm seekers after converts, but they had been tame compared to the Separates. They had not offended the sensitivities of the Anglicans, but with the Separates it was a different story.”⁴⁴

Separate Baptist churches and branches began to spring up everywhere that Stearns and Marshall made converts. One of the first churches to be organized by the mother church at Sandy Creek was at Abbott’s Creek, which was approximately thirty miles from Sandy Creek in present Davidson County. Because “the gospel prospered so largely” there, a church was formed, and a request was made that Marshall be ordained so that he might become the church’s first pastor. Stearns, eager to comply, asked a Regular Baptist minister living on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina to assist him in ordaining Marshall. The man sternly refused, informing Stearns in no uncertain terms that he had no fellowship with Separate Baptists. Stearns then turned to Henry Ledbetter, also Marshall’s brother-in-law, who was living somewhere in the Carolinas. Ledbetter happily accepted the invitation to participate in Marshall’s ordination. Hence at age fifty-one Marshal was ordained and began his duties as pastor of the Abbott’s Creek Church.⁴⁵

During the year preceding his ordination the diligent Marshall achieved notable success in Granville County.⁴⁶ In that year, 1756, he preached to a group of Baptists, probably former General Baptists, at their meetinghouse on Grassy Creek. Numerous converts were won as a result of his labors, and Stearns soon baptized the new Christians. Marshall, combining those he had won with the Baptists who had built the meetinghouse, organized them as a branch of the Sandy Creek Church. The Grassy Creek branch grew rapidly and in 1762 became an independent church. Like Sandy Creek it formed numerous branches and became the seat of operations for Separate evangelistic endeavors in its region of North Carolina.⁴⁷

Many other churches emerged, and all the while young men who were overflowing with the enthusiastic spirit of Stearns and Marshall were stepping forth to mount the newly created pulpits. Among the earliest Separate converts to enter the ministry was Philip Mulkey. After a dramatic conversion Mulkey, who was from Halifax, was baptized by Stearns on Christmas day, 1756. In February, 1757, then a member of the Sandy Creek Church, Mulkey expressed a desire to enter the ministry. The October following, at twenty-five years of age, he was ordained. He became pastor of the Deep Creek Church and served in that capacity until 1759 or 1760, when the church dissolved and part of its members accompanied Mulkey to South Carolina. There he continued to proclaim the faith of the Separate Baptists.⁴⁸

Another young man who was moved by the Separate impulse to preach the gospel was James Read. Born in Virginia in 1725 or 1726 he lived in the area of Grassy Creek by 1756 and was among those brought into the fold by Marshall during that year. Although an illiterate who was eventually taught by his wife to read and write, he entered the ministry and became the first pastor of the Grassy Creek Church in 1762.⁴⁹ About 1766, in answer to what he believed was a divine commission, Read went to Virginia. For awhile, working with Samuel Harris, he met with good success, for there were many converts, and new churches were established.⁵⁰ But it was not long until Read ran into trouble. For some reason he was excommunicated from a church in Spotsylvania County. In 1770 he returned to Grassy Creek and asked the church to pardon him for whatever he had done. The church refused to honor his request until 1772, after which he resumed his ministry in the Grassy Creek Church until his death in 1798.⁵¹

Among the young ministers of the Separate Baptist faith, perhaps Elnathan Davis had the most dramatic conversion experience. Born in Maryland in 1735 Davis had moved to Haw River by 1757. One day he and some companions, expecting to see some excitement, attended a Separate baptizing. Davis walked into the crowd of Separates and found them trembling and crying “as if in a fit of the ague.” While Stearns was preaching a man in the crowd wept on Davis’ “white new coat,” and Davis ran back to his fellow curiosity seekers, who had kept their distance. He said that he did not know whether what he had witnessed was of God or the devil but he would not return. “The enchantment of Shubal Stearns’ voice drew him to the crowd once more,” however. Soon he was trembling like the others. He remained in a state of “horror” for days but at last “found relief by faith in Christ.”⁵² Shortly thereafter he entered the ministry and in 1764 became pastor of the Haw River Church. For some reason Davis was not formally ordained until 1770. He served the Haw River Church as pastor for thirty-four years.⁵³

Two brothers who made significant contributions to the spread of the Separate Baptist faith were Joseph and William Murphy, familiarly called the “Murphy boys.” Both became preachers and both were conspicuously successful. William’s most important accomplishments were in Virginia, the native province of the “Murphy boys.” When the Deep River Church disbanded Joseph went with some of the members to present Montgomery County. There he became pastor of the Little River Church, and within three years its membership climbed to five hundred. Against his wishes many of his members involved themselves in the Regulator movement. Perhaps this was Murphy’s reason for leaving to take a church in present Yadkin County in 1769. Upon reaching his new work he organized the people there into the Shallow Ford Church. The church began with thirty-two members, but in three years the membership swelled to two hundred and eighty-five. The church started two branches, Forks of the Yadkin and Mulberry Fields, in which David Allen, John Cates, and David Chapman, three assistants to Murphy, helped to carry on the work.⁵⁴

Among the young Separate Baptist ministers who arose to serve as pioneer preachers in eastern North Carolina was John Newton who was pastor of the Black River Church in Duplin County.⁵⁵ Nathaniel Powell, an assistant in the Deep River Church, and James Turner also served as pioneers in the eastern part of the province. They ministered periodically to a group of Baptists at Lockwood’s Folly in Brunswick County. These Baptists, originally Regulars, were from Cape May at the mouth of the Delaware River. Shortly after their arrival in North Carolina they were in communication with the Separates of Sandy Creek. By 1762 the Baptists of Lockwood’s Folly were considered a branch of the New River Church, and according to an Anglican missionary were calling themselves Separates. Ezekiel Hunter, pastor of the New River Church, made occasional trips to Lockwood’s Folly until his death in 1773. Apparently James Turner was the last minister to preach there prior to the Revolution.⁵⁶

Some of the men who entered the Separate Baptist ministry were rewarded with great success in North Carolina and Virginia. In this group were Dutton Lane, Samuel Harris, and James Childs. Lane, one of the first in Virginia to embrace the Separate way, traveled with Marshall. His preaching set in motion a stirring revival along the North Carolina-Virginia border. Emerging from this regional awakening in 1760 was the first Separate Baptist church in Virginia. Lane was the first to accept the duties of pastor for the new church.⁵⁷

Samuel Harris, won by the “Murphy boys” and baptized by Marshall in 1758, was ordained a ruling elder in 1759. He, too, traveled with Marshall. Having held such offices as church warden, sheriff, justice of the peace, burgess, colonel of militia, and others, Harris was a rather important man in Virginia. After his conversion and ordination he served for about thirty years as a self-supporting Separate Baptist missionary in many parts of Virginia and North Carolina. During three years of his long ministry he fulfilled the duties of pastor for the Grassy Creek Church and was “unusually popular.” He was a very effective evangelist, being known as a man who addressed the heart.⁵⁸

Undoubtedly the most eccentric of the young Separate Baptist preachers was James Childs. Semple has said that Childs was “never converted from his oddness.” Before his conversion Childs was a gambler and a brawler and was often guilty of “bruising his countrymen’s faces.” After becoming a preacher he firmly believed that God gave him visions of future events. Following a notably successful ministry in Virginia, Childs moved to North Carolina. Settling near the South Carolina line, he established a large church in Anson County.⁵⁹ During the Revolution Childs found himself in trouble with North Carolina authorities for advocating pacifism. He claimed that bearing arms was contrary to his New Light Baptist principles, but very few Separate Baptist preachers supported this position. Ultimately the indignation of the authorities compelled the eccentric minister to flee to South Carolina.⁶⁰

Numerous other men entered the ranks of the Separate Baptist clergy, but they made a lesser impact than those whose stories are related above. Many of them made enduring but less significant contributions.

The phenomenal response to the labors of Stearns and Marshal prompted the former to organize an association of the Separate churches to promote “stability, regularity, and uniformity.” Stearns visited each of the churches to explain his plan. The churches were favorably impressed and agreed to send delegates to the associational meetings.⁶¹ Apparently Stearns worked on this project during 1758. The first associational meeting was scheduled for January, 1760, at the Sandy Creek Church.⁶²

Seven churches, six of North Carolina and one of Virginia, and two branches of Virginia became the charter members of the newly formed Sandy Creek Baptist Association in 1760.⁶³ The promotion of fellowship among Separate churches was the chief purpose of the association. While the association could advise the individual churches, it could compel none. The association’s major activity was appointing preachers to travel to “new places, where the gospel was likely to flourish.”⁶⁴

Semple has described a typical meeting of the Sandy Creek Association as follows:

When assembled, their chief employment was preaching, exhortation, singing, and conversing about their various exertions in the Redeemer’s service, and the attendant success. These things so enflamed the hearts of the ministers, that they would leave the association, with a zeal and courage, which no obstacles could impede.⁶⁵

Unquestionably the organization of the Separate churches into such an association was an enormously important factor in the rapid spread of the Separate faith during the 1760’s. As previously indicated, the earthquake of Separate enthusiasm shook both Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia during that decade. The results of Separate endeavors reported at the third associational meeting were indicative of glowing success. Requests for the association to send preachers were pouring in from various places. By the fifth and sixth associational meetings delegates were received from the far western piedmont to the sea and from South Carolina.⁶⁶

In all probability the delegates who gathered for the second associational meeting were surprised to learn that John Gano, a Regular Baptist minister connected with the Philadelphia Association, was in attendance. Gano was there to observe the “New Light Baptists,” and was given a warm reception by Shubal Stearns. Some of the young preachers, who were uneasy in Gano’s presence, kept their distance. The visiting minister delivered impressive sermons, which were “in the spirit of the gospel,” every day. His superior orations caused the young preachers to declare that they could never “undertake to preach again.” After a rewarding meeting Gano returned “to his country” and, according to Semple, said of the Separates, “... doubtless the power of God was among them ... they certainly had the root of the matter at heart.”⁶⁷

In 1769 the Ketocton Association, composed of Regular Baptist churches in Virginia, sent three messengers, whose names were Garrett, Major, and Saunders, to the Sandy Creek Association to seek a union of the Separates and the Regulars. The Ketocton position was that they were “all Christians, all Baptists, all New-Lights,” and should not be divided by “little appellative names, Regular and Separate.” The proposal for union was debated at length by the Sandy Creek delegates and turned down by a narrow margin.⁶⁸

Seemingly the Separates disagreed with the Regulars over the matter of dress and the confession of faith adhered to by the Ketocton Association. The Separates felt that the latter’s strongly Calvinistic confession of faith might later be elevated to creedal status.⁶⁹

In 1770 the Sandy Creek Association met at Grassy Creek Church. When three days of fasting and prayer failed to produce a unanimous vote on a certain item of business, someone proposed that the association be divided into three districts, one for each province represented. The consent of all was immediately gained for this proposal.⁷⁰ After the division the North Carolina district was left with nine churches and ten branches, most of which became churches later.⁷¹

With the coming of the decade of the 1770’s the future of Separate Baptist work in North Carolina no longer seemed so bright. Daniel Marshall, the untiring workhorse in the Separate cause, had gone to South Carolina about 1760 and had eventually made his way to Georgia. Hence North Carolina Separates were without his ceaseless efforts. But an even greater blow struck their movement when Shubal Stearns, the man who had brought the Great Awakening to North Carolina, died on November 20, 1771.⁷²

When Morgan Edwards visited North Carolina in 1771-1772, the Sandy Creek Church, which in a few years had grown from sixteen to over six hundred members and which had brought forth forty-two churches and one hundred and twenty-five ministers, had only fourteen members. Edwards attributed this lamentable decline to the crushing defeat of the Regulators at Alamance. He was told that fifteen hundred families had fled from the Sandy Creek area to escape the wrath of Governor Tryon, who had reportedly called the Regulator movement a Quaker and Baptist attempt to overthrow the established church.⁷³

The Separates continued to grow, though much less rapidly, until the outbreak of the Revolution, which took the minds of North Carolinians from religious questions and turned them to the exigencies of war. After the war the name Separate, which Stearns and most of his followers had not used, and the name New Light, which they had used, were allowed to fall into disuse.⁷⁴ In less than a decade after the Revolution ended the Regulars and Separates of North Carolina and Virginia merged and took the name United Baptists.

Although the Separates, as militant promoters of the Great Awakening spirit, made a greater and more lasting impact on North Carolina than did other Baptist groups, it should be remembered that they were not the first Baptists to settle in the province. As early as 1729 Governor Everard noted in a letter to the Bishop of London that Baptists were flourishing in North Carolina. He complained that Paul Palmer, “the Baptist Teacher,” was gaining hundreds of followers and he was unable to prevent it.⁷⁵ Two decades later the Baptists were still growing, for James Moir, an Anglican missionary, reported that “a great number” in his county had become Baptists.⁷⁶ These early Baptists, who were tolerated but not liked by the Anglicans, were of the General persuasion; that is, they believed in a general atonement and so were Arminians rather than Calvinists. Paul Palmer organized the first Baptist church, a General church, in North Carolina in 1727. The church was located on the Pasquotank River in Camden County. His continued efforts, reinforced by the labors of Joseph Parker and William Sojourner, resulted in the organization of sixteen General Baptist churches by 1752.⁷⁷

About 1755 the Philadelphia Association sent Benjamin Miller and P. P. Vanhorn to “reform” the General Baptist churches of North Carolina. Fearing that the two preachers were New Lights, the people were reluctant to receive them at first. But ultimately most of the churches opened their doors and their pulpits to Miller and Vanhorn, and the reformation was soon accomplished. The churches reorganized, adopting the rigidly Calvinistic London Confession of Faith. Palmer probably died before the reformation occurred, and Parker was never “convinced of his errors.” However, most of the other General Baptist ministers embraced “the Calvinistic scheme.”⁷⁸ Almost in the twinkling of an eye the General Baptists, by joining the ranks of the Regulars, had reversed their theological position.

The Regulars, it may be recalled, had not been ardent proponents of the Great Awakening during the 1740’s. Except for a few ministers and churches who caught its spirit, the movement gained but little support from the Regulars. Strict adherence to the London Confession of Faith was not likely to produce an evangelistic spirit among the newly organized Baptist churches of North Carolina. The Regulars were destined to be overshadowed by the Separates from 1755 until the Revolution.

In 1769 these “reformed” churches formally organized into the Kehukee Baptist Association. The new association adopted the “platform and sentiments of the Philadelphia Association.”⁷⁹ Churches composing the association were located, for the most part, in the counties of Edgecombe, Halifax, Warren, Bertie, and Camden.⁸⁰

Jonathan Thomas and John Meglamre were sent by the Kehukee Association in 1772 to the Sandy Creek Association to propose a merger of the two bodies. The Separates in turn sent Elijah Craig and David Thompson to the Kehukee Association to explain why they could not “commune with the Regulars.” In the eyes of the Separates the Regulars received members without clear evidence that they had been converted. Also, some Regular churches had members who had been baptized before conversion. The Separates believed that to be valid baptism had to follow conversion. Finally, the Separates were offended by the way the Regulars dressed.⁸¹

Some Regular ministers were moved to reevaluate their position, as a result of the Separates’ criticism of them. The church of which Lemuel Burkitt was pastor declared in 1774 that it would not commune with those who had been baptized before conversion. Other churches soon adopted the same policy. In October, 1775, because of the new stand taken by these churches on baptism, dissension swept through and split the Kehukee Association. But God soon brought “good out of evil,” for there occurred “a glorious revival of religion throughout the churches in general.” And after the Revolution there was that union formed of all North Carolina and Virginia Baptists.⁸² By the time the union was effected the Baptists of all shades of belief had come under the Separate influence. The religion of Shubal Stearns, which was the enthusiastic religion of the Whitefield revivals, would, in a slightly modified form, draw the guide lines for Baptist endeavors in North Carolina and the rest of the South.

George Whitefield, still a popular preacher and a powerful orator, visited North Carolina again in 1764 and 1765. While at New Bern and other places he encountered the Separates whom he called “New-lights.” They were most eager to hear the great evangelist—so eager in fact that he “almost determined to come back early in the spring!”⁸³ Either Whitefield did not realize or would not recognize that the New Lights of North Carolina were the offspring of his own revivals of the 1740’s. While preaching in New Bern in November, 1764, he assailed the Reverend James Reed, an Anglican missionary and minister of the church in which Whitefield was preaching, for calling the “enthusiastic sect” by the name Methodist. According to Whitefield the Methodists were followers of John Wesley and himself, but the New Lights were not. Reed, who was not in New Bern when Whitefield said these things, commented on the evangelist’s claims in a letter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel by saying:

...I do affirm, they sprung from the seed which he first planted in New England and the difference of the soil may perhaps have caused, such an alteration in the fruit, that he may be ashamed of it....⁸⁴

Although wrong in calling the New Light Baptists by the name Methodist, he was right about their origin. Whitefield’s denials that the New Lights were his followers were wasted on well-informed men like Reed.

But Whitefield was not satisfied with simply denying the Separates, for on Easter Sunday, 1765, he preached again in Reed’s church and condemned the New Lights from the pulpit. Reed reported: “Several that had been tinctured with the principles of Methodism came a great many miles to hear him, but had the mortification to hear both their principles and practice condemned.” Reed went on to say that he would “be glad” to see Whitefield more frequently “provided he would always preach in the same strain.”⁸⁵

Perhaps there is a satisfactory explanation for Whitefield’s harangues against the North Carolina Separates. It must he remembered that the famous evangelist lived and died an Anglican. While as a young minister he did not rigidly follow the prescribed methods of his church, he never attempted to leave it. At the beginning of his ministry he had a strong catholic spirit which led him to minimize denominational differences. He was quite willing to enjoy fellowship with all who claimed a personal experience of conversion. Although he was still ecumenically-minded in his later years, he seems to have become a stronger Anglican, at least in his attitude of what constituted proper religious procedure. The fact that he was able to convince James Reed and Governor William Tryon of his utter loyalty to the Anglican Church is some indication that Whitefield had become more regular in his Anglicanism, for both Reed and Tryon were zealous and narrow Anglicans.⁸⁶ As a respectable, middle-aged Anglican minister he was slower to endorse the excessive emotionalism and irregular practices of the Separates, even though they were his own spiritual children. But deny them though he might, the lineage was unmistakable. The strong belief in vital, personal religion had passed from Whitefield to Stearns and Marshall; through them it passed to countless North Carolinians, Virginians, South Carolinians, and Georgians. Actually the Separates took up where Whitefield had left off, and when on his seventh trip to America he died at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on September 30, 1770, the Separate Baptists, more so than any other religious group were at that very moment, far to the south, carrying on in the Whitefield spirit of the 1740’s. But the mighty evangelist’s success in the South during the peak years of the Great Awakening had been largely confined to the Tidewater, the back country being virtually untouched. Thus the task of reaching the hinterland fell to the Separates, and they accomplished it with extraordinary success. The arrival of Shubal Stearns and his party at Sandy Creek in November, 1755, is undeniably one of the greatest landmarks in the history of Baptists, North Carolina, and the South.

Footnotes