Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

individualist, rationalist, and Arminian creed; and the independently founded
"Particular" Baptists, that is, orthodox Calvinists except for their opposition
to infant baptism and differences over church polity. The American Baptists
had always been Arminian, but the Church had remained small. Under the
impact of the Calvinist outburst of the Great Awakening, the Philadelphia
Association, in a fateful turning point in Baptist history, abandoned the
great tradition of the American church and swung over to a rigid Calvinism
in 1742. The Baptists had not yet gone so far as to join the Awakening, but
this drastic switch to Calvinism paved the way for their eventual surrender
to the new movement.
It soon became clear that the Old Lights were winning the struggle for
the capture of the Puritan churches of New England. Many of the separated
New Lights, harassed as unrecognized churches, then took the opportunity
to declare themselves Baptists and thus to win a recognized religious status
—an important consideration in any community where a church is established.
And the shift of the Philadelphia Association to Calvinism made
this course an especially easy one. Between 1740 and the mid-l76Os, the
number of Baptist churches in Massachusetts expanded fivefold, and in Connecticut
and Rhode Island threefold. The Baptists were now not only Calvinists
but New Light Separatists to boot. By 1764 the Baptists were strong
enough to found Rhode Island College (later Brown University), though it
began on liberal principles, with various Protestant sects sharing in control
of the college.
By the early 1760s the Baptists were ready to follow the Ulster Scots
and the Presbyterians southward. To meet the demands of the masses, they
allowed virtually anyone, even illiterates, to dub themselves ministers and to
take up evangelical preaching. By 1760, the Separate Baptists, led by the
former New Light Connecticut Congregationalist Shubal Stearns, had taken
up headquarters at Sandy Creek in Guilford County in western North Carolina.
From there, the Sandy Creek Association spread the Separate Baptist
gospel into Virginia and South Carolina; they soon far overshadowed the
sober and educated older or Regular Baptist churches in these provinces.
Moreover, with their enthusiasm and uneducated ministry, the Separate
Baptists were able after 1760 to grow far more rapidly in the South than
were the Presbyterians. Indeed, they grew extremely rapidly, especially in
Virginia and North Carolina. In the years 1768-70, the "period of the Great
Persecution," the angered Virginia government arrested and imprisoned
over thirty Separate Baptist ministers as disturbers of the peace, but the
persecutions only served to multiply rather than restrict the number of
Baptist adherents.
Despite Whitefield's original connection with the Church of England, the
Anglican church remained a stronghold of opposition to the Great Awakening.
Indeed, many Old Siders, when defeated in their own communions,
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