No Anti-mission Baptists in Tennessee

A letter to J. R. Graves and The Tennessee Baptist, in 1857.

No Anti-mission Baptists in Tennessee.

            Brother Graves.—In the “Tennessee Baptist” of the 7th March, I notice the following question propounded, viz: “How many anti-missionary Baptists in Tennessee?” Answer—not one. Notwithstanding there are many to whom that cognomen has been applied, I apprehend there are no Baptists, according to their best light and the teaching of the New Testament, that will feel themselves implicated by the unguarded use of the term. But that there exists radical differences amongst the Baptists, about what the true missionary spirit of the New Testament is, no one will deny. The question then will assume another form, viz:

            How many Baptists in Tennessee oppose the affiliation of our membership with the institutions which have been associated with our churches in modern days, and which have been instrumental in corrupting Baptist polity and destroying the peace of Zion? I answer, very many. And as an honest enquirer for truth, I again ask you as a brother in Christ, to define what the Baptists held and taught in the twelfth century, as that is the time you refer to as the age in which purity of faith and practice was held and taught by the Baptists, (see your article in the ‘Baptist.’) I am for union, and desire to see the great Baptist family harmonized again.

                                                             Yours in Christ.

                                                             Z. Rose.[i]

In reaction to Rose’s letter, Albert Moore of Grenada, Mississippi wrote to The Tennessee Baptist, “I am also one of those commonly denominated ‘Anti-missionary Baptists,’ but I repudiate the title as unjust and inapplicable.”[ii]

As one who is “anti-missionary” and “missionary,” I have long thought the terminology is imprecise and even pejorative. In a journal article, Rufus B. Spain made an effort to distinguish between “anti-missionism” and “anti-effortism.”

Anti-missionism, strictly speaking, was opposition to missions on doctrinal grounds. “Anti-effortism” was opposition to missions conducted by any agency other than the local church. Anti-missionary Baptists opposed home missions as well as foreign missions, but for different reasons. After about 1825, anti-missionism declined, but anti-effortism continued to increase.[iii]

That is helpful, at least distinguishing between two distinct approaches. However, even Spain struggled to apply it in his own article. Ultimately, I think Zachariah Rose is correct. There really is very little actual “anti-missionism.”

In the referenced article, Spain explained the “anti-effort” “anti-missionary” position as follows:

Other anti-missionary Baptists [i.e., those who were not “hyper-Calvinistic” or didn’t see missions as an “infringement of the divine prerogative and an insult to the Almighty.” rlv] found three principle objections to missions. First, they objected to mission boards because they tended toward centralization of authority. Self-government by each local church was a cherished principle among all Baptists. Second, anti-missionary Baptists objected to mission societies on the grounds that they were man-made, moneyed institutions and, therefore, without scriptural support. This objection was perhaps the most widely circulated. Their third objection was directed chiefly against home missionaries. Many uneducated and democratic-spirited frontiersmen resented the presence among them of learned ministers who received their support from Eastern missionary societies. They also resented the inference that their frontier communities were inferior to eastern society and consequently that they were in need of evangelization. Some frontier preachers also had the practical reason for objecting to home missionaries. They feared that their congregations would attend the services of the better preachers and leave them without hearers.[iv]

Again, I think this is helpful, as far as it goes. There may be “hyper-Calvinistic” Baptists that do not believe in spreading the gospel. So-called “anti-missions,” for the most part, is an ecclesiological issue rather than a soteriological issue. Even Daniel Parker rooted most, if not all, of his objections to the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions in the Baptist doctrine of the church.

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[i] The Tennessee Baptist (Nashville, Tennessee), Saturday, May 2, 1857, p. 2.

[ii] The Tennessee Baptist, Saturday, May 23, 1857, p. 2.

[iii] “R. B. C. Howell: Virginia Baptist Tradition Comes to the Old Southwest,” Rufus B. Spain, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (June, 1955), Nashville, TN: Tennessee Historical Society, pp. 99-119 (114).

[iv] Ibid, p. 114.