Category: Uncategorized

Primary Source, the ABHS quarterly newsletter, is now available in a digital edition which features color photos and embedded links. If you would like to receive this new digital copy, we need your email address. Please email us at abhsoffice@abhsarchives.org and put Digital Primary Source in the subject line. You will receive your Primary Source long before the US Postal Service delivers the paper copy.

October 4: Walter Rauschenbusch, Christian Social Gospel activist, was born in 1861, in Rochester, NY. ABHS holds the bulk of his papers, manuscripts and photographs. Rauschenbusch is pictured here.

October 5: William Carey, a leading Baptist missions proponent, was baptized in England in 1783.

October 8: John Clarke, an early advocate of religious liberty in New England, was born in England in 1609.

October 11: Four Baptists were brought before the Massachusetts court and told to cease ‘schismatical practices” in 1665.

October 14: The Warren Association in Massachusetts petitioned the Continental Congress for religious liberty in 1774. ABHS holds the Warren Association Minutes from 1767.

October 24: Ann Hasseltine Judson, one of the first American overseas missionaries, died in Burma at age 37 in 1826.

October 25: Ralph Elliott was fired by Midwestern Seminary (an SBC affiliated seminary) in the midst of the controversy over his Genesis interpretation in 1962. ABHS holds his personal papers.

October 31: John Mason Peck, pioneer missionary to the western frontier (Ohio and Illinois), was born in Litchfield, CT in 1789. ABHS holds his correspondence from 1833-1852 and a journal from 1854.

The American Baptist Historical Society is accepting nominations for the “George D. Younger Award for Excellence in Local or Regional American Baptist History”.  The deadline is May 1, 2017.

Projects eligible for nomination include but are not restricted to church anniversary celebrations, congregational or regional histories, oral history projects, or other historical programs that promote Baptist history in the local community or region.  The winner will be announced at the 2017 Biennial Convention in Portland, OR.  Nominations will be accepted for projects completed in either 2015 or 2016.

Nominations should include the following documentation:

1. cover sheet listing the name of the project and the name and contact information for the sponsoring church, group or institution,
2. a short (one or two page) description of the project or program, including a project timeline of the dates and locations of project events,
3. supporting material, such as program bulletins, newspaper clippings, and comments by those who participated, either by creating the program/project or as part of the targeted audience,
4. evidence of the quality (historical content and production quality) of the program or project,
5. written evidence or evaluations of the project or program may be supplemented by other records of the program, such as videos, newspaper clippings, audio-recordings, or photographic images,
6. evidence of impact on the targeted audience, with special consideration given for impact on a broader than Baptist community.

Mail nominations and supporting materials to be received at the Historical Society no later than May 1, 2017 to

The Younger Award                                                                                                                                                   American Baptist Historical Society                                                                                                                      3001 Mercer University Drive                                                                                                                             Atlanta, Georgia 30341-4155

For more information please call ABHS at 678-547-6680 or email ABHS@abhsarchives.org.

The New Baptist Covenant is holding  a summit in Atlanta now. Dr. Priscilla E. Eppinger, ABHS’s Executive Director, will bring greetings to the gathering on Thursday morning.  New Baptist Covenant was started in 2007 by President Jimmy Carter, who brought together prominent leaders from across the Baptist family. These leaders represented more than 30 Baptist organizations and over 20 million people. He challenged them to explore new opportunities for fellowship and cooperation. From this effort, a ministry of action named the New Baptist Covenant was born, uniting Baptists and renewing the pursuit of unity and justice on the local and national scale.

New Baptist Covenant churches, who are working together for racial justice and reconciliation, are not the first Baptists to come together with this goal.  In the 1890s black and white Baptist churches worked together to sponsor New Era Baptist Institutes to train leaders in the black churches.

Dr. Deborah Van Broekhoven, ABHS’s immediate past Executive Director,  will give a lecture on the New Era Baptist Institutes on Friday, September 30, at 7 p.m. in the Atlanta Administration and Conference Center, 2930 Flowers Road South, Atlanta.

For more information about this lecture, see our Post on August 26.  For more information on the current meeting, Google New Baptist Covenant.

The photo shows Rev. Alyssa Aldape, Rev. Heather Mustain sharing the Lord’s Supper, courtesy of the New Baptist Covenant.

1^st   First issue of the precursor to American Baptist Magazine was published in 1803.   It is the oldest extant religious magazine.

5^th Obadiah Holmes was brutally whipped in 1651 for religious beliefs, but he continued to preach during the whipping.

9^th   The first Baptist church in Oklahoma was organized in 1832 by 3 Blacks, 1 Creek Indian and 2 Whites.

17^th   Joseph Murrow organized the Indian Orphans’ Home in Oklahoma in 1902, the first Baptist orphanage for Indians.

18^th   Alderson Academy (in West Virginia) began classes in 1901 with 40 students.  It subsequently became Alderson-Broadus College.

19^th   The Philadelphia Association stated its support for local church autonomy in 1749.  ABHS’s collection of Philadelphia Association minutes goes back to 1770.

22^nd The first Baptist missionaries to Alaska, Ernest and Ida Roscoe, arrived on Kodiak Island in 1886 (see photo of Kodiak above).

23^rd The National Baptist Convention, USA Inc., was organized in 1895 in the Friendship Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA

26^th Joanna P. Moore, lifelong teacher in Southern Black communities was born in 1832.

Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough had her own perspective on the power of Christianity and revolutionary nature. In her time in India, she portrays a theology of suffering and the suffering of Jesus on the cross. During her time as a missionary in India, Emma witnessed and endured a terrible famine that cost the lives of many. Through this, however, the Madiga pariah tribe that she worked with desired to hear to words of Jesus, “Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest.”

She writes that the groups of Madigas would say, “Our God does not send trouble because He is thirsting for the lives of men. He has let this come upon us because He saw that men were going wrong—that they were doing puja to gods in whom there was no salvation. Jesus Christ, by dying for us, has taken all of our troubles upon himself.” Emma’s idea of the power of Christianity was the fact that it liberates people from their struggles, both within their souls and the social order.

This is further evidenced by the fact that when she discusses the preaching of the missionaries, she says “Their preaching was characterized neither by profound thinking nor by brilliant oratory. It was just the story of Christ and Him crucified told over and over again. Much as, in the days of primitive Christianity, simple but earnest men told the sublime story of the life and death of Christ to everyone, so these men went out to make Christ the centre of their thoughts and words.” The power of Christianity, to Emma, seems to be nothing more or less than Jesus himself. This is a similarity to her brother Walter Rauschenbusch, who discussed the personality of Jesus and how revolutionary that personality was and is.

I believe that we have some to learn from Emma today. We must keep in mind that Christianity does not involve any profound thought or speaking skills. The power of Christianity is in Jesus and his life and death. Christianity is about boldness, not depth of thought. Jesus must be our starting point: nothing more, nothing less. He also must be where we are going. We must reach out to our neighbors who are broken and hurting as Christ did. It is not the well who need a doctor, but the sick. Christ lived and died to take away the separation of us all. Christ has united us all in life and death. As Christ is one, we are one with him and each other. We must live this conviction out in boldness as Emma did. The work of the Kingdom is not easy, but it is needed so that we may see justice roll down like waters, and righteousness flow like an ever flowing stream.

Andrew Scott, ABHS Research Assistant

Source of photographs:

Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, While Sewing Sandals (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1899).

Immediate past Executive Director, Dr. Deborah Van Broekhoven, will give a lecture on New Era Baptist Institutes: A Nineteenth-Century Path Toward Cooperation on Friday, September 30, at 7 p.m in the second floor auditorium of Mercer University’s (Atlanta Campus) Atlanta Administration and Conference Center, 2930 Flowers Road S., Atlanta.

As part of the annual History Event sponsored by ABHS, Van Broekhoven will explore the challenges experienced by black and white Baptists who cooperated to sponsor New Era Baptist Institutes, short term schools for African-American church leaders.  Conceived by Northern and Southern Baptist leaders after their Fortress Monroe meeting in 1894, these schools across the south provide a rare example of black and white leaders working together.

This event is free and open to the public.  See our web page for directions to the AACC.

Dr. Van Broekhoven is the immediate past Executive Director of the American Baptist Historical Society.  She  holds a doctorate in history from Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and served as a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University before joining the staff of ABHS as Executive Director in 1998.  She has had a longstanding interest in the history of race relations, beginning with her book The Devotion of These Women: Rhode Island Women in the Antislavery Network.

4: Franklin College became the first college in Indiana to admit women in 1842.

8: Virginia Baptists met with President Washington to press for guarantees of religious liberty in 1789.

10: Annie J. Ward received the first ‘four-year’ diploma from Chowan College in North Carolina in 1853.

12: James Ware and James Pittman were tried in Caroline County, VA, for having preaching in their homes in 1772.

17: Pensylvania’s Northumberland Baptist Association took a strong stand against slavery in 1855.

22: Nathaniel Saunders was summoned to appear in court in Culpepper county, VA, for preaching in 1772.

24: William Jewell college, the first four-year college west of Mississippi River, was charted in Liberty MO, in 1849.

26: Four Baptist ministers were tried in Middlesex County, VA, for preaching outside the state church in 1771.

Drawing of Franklin College from Cathcart’s Baptist Encyclopedia.

We invite you to explore our new online catalog for archives and manuscripts. (Click on  ‘Continue Reading…’ below for the link) The catalog contains entries for our holdings of personal papers, missionary correspondence, and more.   Several entries contain digital images of items from the collections.  This catalog is a work-in-progress, with new entries being added on a regular basis.  We invite your comments, questions, and suggestions regarding its usability.  Email your remarks to jballard@abhsarchives.org; subject line: “online catalog.”

Perhaps one of the most influential theologians of the early twentieth century was Walter Rauschenbusch, who has been described as a prophet of one of the most influential ideas in theology in the early part of his era: the social gospel. He is the author of many influential writings. His most important book was Christianity and the Social Crisis, which was published in 1907 and made Rauschenbusch a very sought-after speaker. Additionally, his Christianizing the Social Order, Prayers for Social Awakening, and A Theology for the Social Gospel are also among his most influential writings.

However, Walter Rauschenbusch is only one person in a Rauschenbusch family legacy. Most do not know that Walter had two sisters: Frida Rauschenbusch, born in September 1855, and Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, born in 1859. Both sisters would go on to do work within the field of social redemption. However, I think that Emma is perhaps the most interesting member of the Rauschenbusch family. In an autobiographical note to his wife Pauline, Walter would describe Emma as “a wild bumble bee. . . She was active physically, up to mischief, with an inclination to insist on her rights, and with a capacity for friendship and also for jealousy of others.”

Little did Walter know this “inclination to insist on her rights” would be something that Emma would do her for her entire life.  Her insistence on her rights would eventually expand to include all women. In her dissertation, A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman, she explored the life, writings, views and legacy of famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the theme of what she called the “emancipation of women.”

In the conclusion of her dissertation, Emma demanded that a woman “win for herself the rights to which she has claim as a human being.” She continued to long for and to fight for the day that to pass “when one human being could dictate to another: Thy rank in society, or in this case thy sex, robs thee of the opportunity of striving after the attainment of the highest possible degree of development of all thy faculties.” This, in an age in which the role of the woman in society was to keep the home and to bear children, was a radical idea. It still is today. Even today, Emma’s vision has not truly been realized. Even today there is a glass ceiling that keeps women from attaining the highest development and use of all of their abilities. “No!” cries Emma. Women are human beings too and thus deserve all of the rights pertaining to men as their equal. May we continue this fight today as we honor a mind well ahead of her time – and, perhaps, even our time, as well.

Andrew Scott

ABHS Research Assistant

Sources:

Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdom is Forever Coming:  A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004).

Title page from book drawn from Emma Rauschenbusch’s dissertation.  Google books link:  https://books.google.com/books?id=cIQEAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

In the study of social Christianity, the family name “Rauschenbusch” is a familiar one. Most of the time, however, the surname is synonymous with only one first name: “Walter.” Walter Rauschenbusch was a great mind and social gospel innovator. However, I believe that his family is often overlooked in how they worked with and in social Christianity; or, at the very least, how they influenced Walter in his thinking.

His father, August (or Augustus) Rauschenbusch was a German Baptist evangelist and later teacher in the German Department of Rochester Theological Seminary, where Walter would later be educated. August’s ministry was certainly not based on a social gospel like Walter’s. His driving passion was to save the souls of individuals. He possessed a very intense personality and would be regarded by his peers as “a great man, a man of God.” However, his relationship with his family was one characterized by long periods of absence along with fits of rage when he was present.

There seems to be little known about Walter’s mother, Caroline Rauschenbusch, except that her marriage to August was very rough. Rauschenbusch biographer Christopher H. Evans notes that the marriage “was volatile and, at the minimum, verbally violent.” Walter would go to write later in life that his parents’ estrangement was one of “the great sorrows in my life.” However, most significantly, during Walter’s pastorate of the Second German Baptist Church in New York City from 1886-1897, Caroline Rauschenbusch filled the important social role of the pastor’s wife in the congregation. Walter was young and unmarried, so Caroline did help support Walter during his ministry in New York – a ministry that would shape his future thoughts as a social gospel innovator.

Walter’s oldest sister, Frida Rauschenbusch Fetzer, was born in September 1855. Christopher Evans notes that he did not develop a close relationship with Frida until his thirties. Not much is known about her. However, clues in a letter regarding her by Walter gives clues that she was a reformer in her own right. Rauschenbusch wrote to Reverend George Huntington:  “Mrs. Fetzer was not simply a wife and mother, but an active missionary force. She was, I suppose, the only college woman among the German Baptists, and she brought over the traditions of educated and progressive womanhood in America . . . She has for years edited the monthly paper of the young women’s organizations and has spoken and agitated wherever possible among the churches for organization and active participation of women in church life.” He goes on to conclude,“According to my judgment she has been more of a pioneering force than any of the American men.” She certainly seemed to have a passion for women and the active participation of women in the church.

I find his other sister, Emma Rauschenbusch Clough, to be perhaps the most interesting member of the family besides Walter himself. She was a missionary in the Telugu Mission in South India, where she educated girls and women. She also endured a major famine and witnessed a “second Pentecost,” when thousands of members of the Madiga clan where baptized. She worked with missionary – and, later, husband — John Clough to build Christianity into the social order of the people that she lived. If Walter discussed social Christianity, Emma actually did it. She earned a PhD degree and later authored two books: While Sewing Sandals and Social Christianity in the Orient (the authorship of which is attributed to her husband John Everett Clough). Emma Rauschenbusch is a woman that deserves more study and research as part of the Rauschenbusch family legacy.

Andrew Scott, ABHS Student Research Assistant

Sources:

Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdom is Forever Coming:  A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004)

Letter from Walter Rauschenbusch to George B. Huntingdon, April 21, 1913.  Walter Rauschenbusch Family Papers, RG 1003, box 36, folder 2.  American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia.

Image:  Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, While Sewing Sandals (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1899).  Google Books:

July 6, 1849: the first Baptist church in California was organized in San Francisco by Osgood Church Wheeler.

July 13, 1813:  Adoniram and Ann Judson arrived in Rangoon, Burma, to begin missionary work.  Adoniram worked for 37 years in the mission field.  Ann died in 1826, and Adoniram married Sarah Boardman  (1803-1845) and then Emily Chubbuck (1817-1854).

July 19, 1651: John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall arrived in Lynn MA, and began preaching illegally.

July 27, 1707: The Philadelphia Baptist Association was founded as the first Baptist association in what became the United States.

July 31, 1861: Helen Barrett Montgomery (pictured above), the first woman president of the Northern Baptist Convention, was born in Kingsville, OH.  She was president in 1921-22.

The American Baptist Historical Society welcomes Rev. Dr. Priscilla Eppinger as the next Executive Director.  She will begin her duties on August 15.  Dr. Eppinger comes to the Historical Society from Graceland University Community of Christ Seminary in Lamoni, Iowa, where she has been Professor of Religion since 2002. She was educated at Agnes Scott College (BA), Andover Newton Theological School (M.Div), and Northwestern University and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (PhD). At Graceland University, she has been teaching religious studies, theology, and church history to seminary students and undergraduates.

Her roots in American Baptist Churches (ABC) life run deep, having served as a missionary to Zaire and on staff for the American Baptist Home Mission Societies.  She has also been a member of the General Board of ABC and the board of ABC Educational Ministries, as well as on the ABC biennial planning committee. As an ordained minister, she served churches in Massachusetts and Illinois.

A public welcome is being planned by the Board of Managers for Friday, September 30.

Throughout the history of the Christian religion, there have been different views of Jesus and his redeeming work. In fact, one man once said that “No individual, no Church, no age of history has ever comprehended the full scope of God’s saving purposes in Jesus Christ.” That man was Walter Rauschenbusch. Born on October 4, 1861 to German immigrants Augustus and Caroline Rauschenbusch in Rochester, New York, Rauschenbusch went on to become an advocate for a movement that would later be termed the “social gospel.”

This term, particularly in Rauschenbusch’s thought, was driven by one key concept: the Kingdom of God. Throughout his pastoral ministry in Second German Baptist Church in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen from 1886-1897, Rauschenbusch quickly began to realize that an individual conception of salvation and the kingdom was not enough for his congregation. He realized that the scope needed of this concept had to be broadened. Jesus prayed that God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. This concept of an earthly order of affairs shaped by the teachings of Jesus Christ continued to grow in Rauschenbusch’s writings and teachings at Rochester Theological Seminary where he taught from 1897 until his death in 1918.

In one of his first major published works, “The New Evangelism,” Rauschenbusch talks of the need for a new evangelism to rise up and replace the old evangelism. Rauschenbusch says that “It (the powerlessness of the old evangelism) lies in the fact that modern life has gone through immense changes and the Church has not kept pace with it in developing the latent moral and spiritual resources of the Gospel which are needed by the new life.” In this new life, Rauschenbusch argues, one needs to simply personal piety, e.g. going to church, staying sober, avoiding sexual promiscuity, and so forth.  But one must also attend equally to the social realm because choosing only personal sanctity allows one to contribute to an oppressive social system.

Rauschenbusch continued his life work attempting to flesh out this new evangelism that will only come when the church is open and observant to the developments that are happening in the current world around us. For Rauschenbusch himself, these developments were best found in communion with the working class factory worker in inhumane working environments, child labor, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. What are our markers today? How can we, in the spirit of Rauschenbusch, look to create a more just society based upon the teachings of Jesus? How can we continue to plant the seeds of the kingdom in the soil of our current society for the Father to water? How can we continue the growth of the kingdom? These are questions that we must ask ourselves, for the Kingdom is always but coming.

Andrew Scott, ABHS Student Research Assistant

Source:  Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdome is Forever Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004).

4– In 1768 Five Virginia Baptists were imprisoned by the state for ‘disturbing the peace’.

9 – 1834, William Carey died at the age of 72, in his 42^nd year as a missionary to India.

16 – In 1636 the residents of Providence Plantations (RI) drew up a compact allowing religious freedom.

18 – In 1781 the Severns Valley Church was organized in Kentucky.  This was the first Baptist church west of the original 13 colonies.

19 – In 1809 First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, offered “brethren of color’ the use of its building.

22 – In 1875, Dong Gong was ordained to ministry in Portland, OR.  He was the first Asian-American ordained by Baptists.  He is pictured here.

Helen Barrett Montgomery (1861-1934) was born in Ohio, but her family moved to Rochester, NY, when she was 9  years old.  While she was at Wellesley she began the study of Greek, which she continued for the rest of her life.  She was very active in the Lake Avenue Baptist Church, organizing and leading a women’s Bible Class which she taught for 44 years.

Her concern for social reform and civic causes grew out of her biblical and theological understandings.  As the first woman elected to public office in Rochester (twenty years before women got the vote), she served on the Rochester School Board and served for 10 years.

While the cause of woman’s suffrage was important to her, most of her efforts were given to the women’s missionary movement.  She wrote many books, led many missionary groups, and traveled to many mission fields.

In 1921 she was elected the president of the Northern Baptist Convention and presided over the 1922 convention. As the first women president of any protestant denomination, she led the Baptists through controversy with grace and prayers.

ABHS has a booklet about her life called Envoy of Grace, by Conda Delite Hitch Abbot.  It is available for $5.  Order by sending a check to ABHS, 3001 Mercer University Drive, Atlanta, GA 30341.

ABHS has Black History month resources including a bulletin insert entitled “Liberty To Vote,” that can be downloaded from our ‘For Churches’ page. In addition a recent issue of the American Baptist Quarterly (Vol. 2, summer, 2013) has articles related to black history. Individual issues of the ABQ can be purchased by calling ABHS at 678-547-6680.

Recently we found a volume written by George W. Williams (1849-1891) who was born in Pennsylvania (a free state), and was a soldier before entering Howard University in 1869. As the first black student at Newton Theological Institute he graduated in 1874, and was ordained and installed as the pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church in Boston. After moving to Ohio, he was elected to the House of Representative of the Ohio General Assembly for a term.

His enduring legacy is as an antislavery activist and writer, having authored the first history of African Americans in the United States. ABHS has a first edition of this book entitled History of the Negro Race in America 1619-1880 which includes a chapter on ‘Colored Baptists of America.’ This two volume   book can befound on-line at https://archive.org/details/historyofnegrora00willrich.

He is also notable for his travels to the Belgium Congo in 1891, where he saw the horrible condition of slaves working on rubber plantations and wrote Open Letter to …Leopold, King of the Belgians.

The definitive biography of Williams is by John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography.

The accompanying photos come from the book History of the Negro Race in America (1882).

McAfee School of Theology student Traveous Adkins is working with ABHS’s rare book collection.  The goal is to put our books in an on-line catalog which can be accessed by researchers.  These books date from the early 1600s, and deal with religious matters primarily.  Church leaders spoke out on such issues as baptism, church membership and the evils of the day.  These books are considered rare because they are old, but also because there may be only one or two other copies in this country.  This work is part of  our campaign, At Your Fingertips, which is seeking donations with the goal to digitize parts of our collection.