Heedless Happy History

When researching and then relating Baptist history, one division often ignores the other as non-existent. For example, the Old North Church in Nacogdoches is often called the oldest Baptist Church or oldest existing Baptist church Texas.[i] I love the history of the Old North Church, its founder, and its families. Nevertheless, the above claim simply is not true. The Pilgrim Church at Elkhart is older, both when it was organized, when it arrived in Texas – and it still exists too.[ii] Missionary Baptists make such claims with blinders, and Primitive Baptists are more than happy to return the favor (of dismissing the historical claims of “the other side”). Even if one claims non-relation in the present, it is nevertheless not accurate regarding history. In early Texas history, it can be demonstrated from church and associational records that quite a few preachers, members, and churches moved back and forth between various factions.

In some cases, Daniel Parker would be a case in point, the move had to be sanctioned by a “restoration of order” and maybe sometimes even baptism, but in other cases where the shibboleth was not quite as strict, people moved more freely between. The old Sabine Association demonstrates this. When organized, it originally was an association made up of churches that held both “missionary” and “anti-missionary” viewpoints. Daniel Parker organized Bethel Church, one of the churches in the constitution of the Sabine Association in 1843. Thomas Hanks, who followed Daniel Parker as pastor at Pilgrim, was once a member of the Union (Old North) Church in Nacogdoches. William Sparks, before the Union Church was formed in 1838, was a deacon in the Hopewell Church in Nacogdoches County, one of the original churches in Parker’s Union Association. If I remember correctly, Bowley C. Walters (later a preacher) served as a delegate at the formation of both the Union (Parker) and Sabine Associations.  Asa Wright worked with Daniel Parker in the Union “Anti-Missionary” Baptist Association, with Isaac Reed in the Sabine “O-Missionary” Baptist Association, and with Z. N. Morrell in the Union “Missionary” Baptist Association![iii]

This may be history that both sides would prefer to forget. It is documented history, nevertheless.

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[i] For the most part historians make allowances for and differences in “continuously existed” versus “continuously met” – as in some churches may have missed regular meetings for a time, meetings were sometimes disrupted and flocks scattered in early years; but the books were kept and the church did not dissolve – so usually would still be considered a “continuous” church from its time of organization.

[ii] Pilgrim Church was organized in Illinois. In 1834 the state of Coahuila y Tejas relaxed state regulations in order to not molest a religious gathering of those who were not otherwise causing any harm. Afterwards – also in 1834 – Abner Smith and Isaac Crouch organized a Baptist Church called Providence, near Bastrop. It is often forgotten because it does not still exist today. It was the first Baptist Church organized on Texas soil.

[iii] Using terms I do not like, for effect. J. M. Carroll uses “Omissionary” (ill-advisedly, in my opinion) to refer to Isaac Reed in A History of Texas Baptists (p. 115).