Historian David Crowe reviews a new work on early Free Will Baptists in New England.

Awakening of the Freewill Baptists

by David Crowe

A few months ago as I was searching American Booksellers Exchange, I came across a volume that really caught my attention. The book was titled, The Awakening of the Freewill Baptists, and was listed by a bookstore in London. While I’ve bought many old Free Will Baptist books and historical items online, this was a new publication published in 2011.

The book was written by Dr. Scott Bryant as his dissertation for a Ph.D. in Church History, and published by Mercer University Press. Dr. Bryant attended Boston University and Baylor University and is an ordained Baptist minister living in Waco, Texas.

I must confess that even though I purchased the book, I expected Dr. Bryant to approach the subject from a critical viewpoint, especially since he’s not a Free Will Baptist. When the book arrived I quickly read it, curious about his perspective on this aspect of Free Will Baptist history.

The Foreword was written by Dr. William H. Brackney, professor at Acadia University and director of the Acadia Center for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, and mentor to Dr. Bryant. In his statements, he reminds readers that 2011 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, and he described the profound impact the “Reformed Tradition” had upon western civilization and Protestant and evangelical thought. He also commented on the more recent resurgence of Five-Point Calvinism among mainstream Baptists.

Dr. Brackney further states that Bryant’s work is important to this discussion because many Baptist historians would have you to believe that the Calvinistic tendency has numerically outdistanced and theologically swamped mainstream and come-outer Baptist groups. Dr. Bryant’s book looks at what Dr. Brackney calls, “arguably the most successful and interesting break with the Calvinistic Baptist camp in early American religious history.”

This article is not intended to be a full book review, but simply records my observations about Bryant’s work that might encourage and motivate other Free Will Baptists to find and read this book. I don’t agree with every conclusion made by Dr. Bryant, but he makes a powerful case that Benjamin Randall was a genuine religious hero and the Founder of an American religious tradition.

He takes exception to the view widely held among Free Will Baptists in the southern states that Benjamin Randall had a Calvinistic stage in his development, and I tend to agree with Dr. Bryant on that point. He places Randall in the same company as other heroic men in American religious life such as Francis Asbury, John Henry Hobart, and Henry Muhlenburg. He even calls him the leader among “lesser known” Baptists such as Isaac Case, Morgan Edwards, and Shubal Stearns, placing him on level ground with Baptist dissidents Isaac Backus, Elhanan Winchester, and Elias Smith.

One of the conclusions that Dr. Bryant reaches is this:

“Historians of American religious history often draw a sharp distinction between the First Great Awakening of the eighteenth century and the Second Great Awakening that occurred a century later. The first wave of revivals challenged the authority of and the practice of the established churches while the second wave was dominated by the rise of the common man. The Freewill Baptists serve as a unique religious movement that bridges the supposed gap between the two revivals, as they began as a result of the eighteenth century revivals and developed and matured during the revivals of the nineteenth century.”

I had never heard a Free Will Baptist historian come to that conclusion, much less a Baptist historian! I hope this article will stir your interest, and that you will not only read this book, but you will begin a journey into the rich and wonderful history and heritage of the people called Free Will Baptists.

About the Writer: David Crowe is director of development for Home Missions. A member of the Free Will Baptist Historical Commission, David is a student of Free Will Baptist history and has accumulated a large library of historic Free Will Baptist books and memorabilia.