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To: NoLibZone

No Methodists on the list, but then methodism hadn’t formed their own churches in America until after the Declaration of Independence.

The Baptists didn’t really organize much in America either until the beginning of the 19th Century.


17 posted on 07/04/2010 5:33:02 PM PDT by I_Like_Spam
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To: I_Like_Spam

Methodism started as a reform movement within the Anglican Church. I thought that Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, was considered a Baptist. Anyway, Baptists were just another flavor of Calvinist, and Calvinists were abundant in the colonies and among the signers of the Declaration.


23 posted on 07/04/2010 5:45:27 PM PDT by hellbender
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To: I_Like_Spam
"The Baptists didn’t really organize much in America either until the beginning of the 19th Century." -------------------------------------------------

There were not large associations or denominational structures of Baptists, but there were hundreds of local Baptist congregations all over the colonies.

English Baptist congregations had moved as whole bodies to the colonies.

The Rhode Island area had strong Baptist congregations from the 17th century. Many of those people had left the colonies from the north because of persecution toward them from the Congregational churches, which demanded public attendance at the Congregational churches. Many Baptists, Quakers, and independents were jailed, fined, taxed, run out in/from the northern colonies.

Thousands of converts of the great Evangelist George Whitefield (Anglican), never joined the Anglican churches, but joined with New Light Congregationalists, independents, and many, many of them with Baptists on the western frontier.

I recommend two books: (1)America in Crimson Red, The Baptist History of America by James Beller of Arnold, Missouri, and The Separate Baptists, The Life and Times of Shubal Stearns. The author's name for the latter escapes me at the moment, but it can be Googled. It is published by the University of Kentucky Press . Dr. Beller's book is published by Prairie Fire Press in Arnold, Missouri (hardback, high quality).

Shubal Stearns Baptist church near present day Greensboro, NC, had 1,000 members in the mid 18th century and was directly responsible for the planting of more than 1,000 local churches in the Carolina's, Kentucky, Tennessee, and north Georgia.

The Separate Baptists of the same strain planted churches all the way to the Wabash River and Vincennes, Indiana by 1825.

The Baptists of Virginia had very direct influence on the writing of the Bill of Rights, their prominent leader, John Leland, being a personal friend and confidante of James Madison.

50 posted on 07/04/2010 6:46:28 PM PDT by John Leland 1789 (Grateful)
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