Hello, its me again, @obbietylertodd, on Baptist politics in the early USA. As I posted yesterday, while most Baptists may have been Republicans in the early republic, we should not overlook the significant amount of Baptist Federalists who molded the denomination. For example...

Richard Furman, pastor of FBC Charleston, was a staunch Federalist & counted Charles Pinckney as one of his best friends. Furman was the inaugural president of the Triennial Convention, the 1st nationwide Baptist denomination in American history. He also founded the SC Baptist...

convention in 1821, using his authority 1 yr later to write, on behalf of the SC Baptists, a defense of slavery after the state was in suspense after DenmarkVesey's slave revolt plot. Infact, one could argue that Furman's defense laid the groundwork for later Southern Baptists...

Baptist Federalists molded much of the South, in fact. Henry Holcombe, a former calvaryman in the Revolutionary War, was a delegate at the South Carolina ratifying convention. He voted in FAVOR of ratification. He later founded the Savannah Baptist Association in 1801. Also...

Jonathan Maxcy, who originally served as the 2nd prez of Brown University after James Manning (another Baptist Federalist), eventually became the 1st prez of SouthCarolinaCollege (now USC). Maxcy's Federalist views wereso extreme that it nearly prevented him from getting the job!

Baptist Federalists like Furman & Maxcy would influence a host of men who shaped the SBC in 1845, including W. T. Brantly, Basily Manly Sr., etc. One might say that the lasting legacy of Baptist Federalism was its emphasis on education and entities, as they believed in structure.

But Baptist politics wasn't all about partisanship. Henry Holcombe, for example, wasnt as outspoken about his Federalist views as Furman. For yrs, for instance, Jesse Mercer did not exercise his right to vote, "for he said all parties had aberrated so far from the constitution...

"...that he could not conscientiously vote for the candidates." This did not keep Mercer from state politics, however. In 1798, true to his Baptist principles, he wrote the article in the GA Constitution guaranteeing religious liberty for all. Mercer also later unsuccessfully...

ran for state senator in 1816. Again, unlike Methodists, who have been called a largely "a-political" denomination in the new republic, Baptists were a politically involved people. Their views on religious liberty demanded participation in the public square. But the disagreed...

on the way to attain RL and even what RL looked like. After serving in the Revolutionary War, Henry Holcombe became a semi-pacifist. But John Leland believed that there was "7 times the justification" as the War of 1812 as there was for the Revolution! This was probably due to...

the fact that Leland was a "dyed-in-the-skin" Republican and an even greater Jacksonian. He believed that England was constantly a threat to religious liberty and pure (revivalist) religion. For Baptist Federalists, on the other hand, French "infidelity" was the greater threat.

One thing Baptists had in their favor during this period was a common underdog mentalite, we might say. While Baptists in SC werent being persecuted like they were in New England, their dissenter status united them despite their political differences. We can also see that...

a testament to the unity of Baptists during this time in the fact that they were sending Adoniram Judson to Burma in 1812...during a war. And they were teaming with the enemy! They convened their first denomination in 1814, in a moment of national crisis. The optimism and pwr...

that had taken hold of the nation were permeating the Baptist denomination. The Triennial Convention even met in Philadelphia, which was symbolic. Just as the nation was constituting, so were Baptists. And they were ascending the political ladder. The governorofVT was a Baptist!

This is just a sampling of my research into Baptist politics during the early republic. Tomorrow I'll explore the quest for religious liberty and how it empowered (and divided) Baptists. Even though Baptists were labeled as loyalists during the Revolution, that quickly changed...