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Shubal Stearns and the Separate Baptists

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Shubal Stearns and the Separate Baptists HISTORICAL SKETCHES CANE CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH Number 32: October 2012 www.canecreek.org 6901 Orange Grove Rd., Hillsborough, NC 27278 Shubal Stearns and the Separate Baptists Shubal Stearns is an unfamiliar name to most Southern Baptists today yet without him it is likely that there would never have been a Cane Creek Baptist Church or even a Southern Baptist Convention, at least not one that resembles our current Convention. Since our church is a “granddaughter” of Stern’s church, it would be fun to know a bit about this amazing man. Stearns, born in 1706, was a member of a New England Congregational Church. When the “Great Awakening” reached American shores from its English birthplace, it sparked a spiritual response among Congregationalists that became known as the “New Light” movement. The New Lights embraced a highly emotional style of worship that emphasized the “born again” experience. One could become a devout Christian in a flash as if struck by a spiritual thunderbolt. (The “Old Lights” preferred the traditional style of worship in which one slowly and methodically became a Christian by studying the Bible and listening to the teachings of one’s elders.) Stearns became strongly attracted to New Lights after hearing a sermon by George Whitefield in 1754. Conflict between New and Old Lights drove Stearns to a more congenial home among a totally New Light group of Congregationalists who had already split off from their traditional “Old Light” church and called themselves “Separates.” This name was based on a verse from Corinthians 6:17 “Come out from among them and be ye separate.” Still later, Sterns decided that his views on baptism (i.e., that it was appropriate for adults and older children but not for infants) was closer to those of Baptists. He therefore became a Baptist and an ordained preacher but held on to the designation “Separate.” He became the founder of a branch of Baptists known as Separate Baptists. (This was at a time when Baptists had begun to divide themselves into groups. In North Carolina at about the same time, there were already rival groups of Baptists known as “Generals” and” Particulars.” Yet to come were the “Regulars.”) Soon Sterns felt God calling him to spread the gospel to the south and west in the “waste places” inhabited by frontiersmen and Indians. He persuaded a small group including his two sisters and their husbands, to sell their property and move with him to do the Lord’s bidding. This was a dramatic life change for a man of almost fifty years and it was at least in part motivated by a feeling that the Second Coming was at hand. In 1754 they landed in Opekon, a small town in northern Virginia and joined the local Baptist church. But from the start they ran afoul of two circumstances. First, was the fact that Virginia already had an “established” church. Under the direct control of the British crown, the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church or the Established Church; its descendants are the present day Episcopalians.) This was the only religion allowed to be publically practiced. Failure to pay the “vestry” tax which supported the Established Church was a crime as was persistent failure to attend weekly church services. The second circumstance was that the local Baptist Church belonged to the Philadelphia Association which was highly Calvinistic. Since Calvinists are only lukewarm to evangelism and Stearns was highly evangelistic, there was a conflict that soon led Stearns and his little band to pack their belongings and head farther south to a land where, they had been told, the people were destitute of religion and were so eager to hear the gospel preached that they might ride forty miles to hear one sermon. The little group arrived at Sandy Creek (about fifty miles southwest of Cane Creek) and set about to build a small meeting house even before building dwellings for themselves. North Carolina was growing rapidly. It had a population of about 80,000 whites and 20,000 slaves and settlers arrived daily from Virginia and Pennsylvania. Sandy Creek was a wisely chosen location at the intersection of three trading paths. Organized religion was virtually absent from the backcountry. (One exception was a group of Quakers who were then moving in the area around that other Cane Creek on the south of Haw River and building what they called “Cane Creek Meeting House.) Colonial Governor Johnston was bemoaning the passage of yet a few more dismal years failing to “civilize a wild and barbarous people.” The time and place were ripe for the planting of a new spiritual seed. A contemporary observer wrote that, “Mr. Stearns was but a little man … His voice was musical and strong, which he managed in such a manner… as to make soft impressions on the heart and fetch tears to the eyes and anon to shake the nerves and throw the animal system into tumults and perturbations.” Stearns wanted everyone to feel conviction and emotion and to experience a born-again revelation. Another observer described his sermons as delivered with “a very warm and pathetic address, accompanied by strong gestures and a singular tone of voice. “ His audience “frequently expressed tears, trembling, screams, and acclimations of grief and joy. … The people were greatly astonished having never seen things on this wise before.” Morgan Edwards, writing a few decades later said that, “in three years’ time they had increased to three churches and upwards of 900 communicants… [Sandy Creek] was a mother church, nay a grandmother and great grandmother. All the Separate Baptists sprang hence. The word went forth from this Zion and great was the company of those that published it, in so much that her converts were as drops of morning dew.” But there were other Baptists present in North Carolina, so-called General Baptists and Particular Baptists. The religious historian Benedict says that among these latter Baptists, Stearns’ Separates were considered “a disorderly set, suffering women to pray in public, and permitting every ignorant man to preach who chooses, and that they encourage noise and confusion in their meetings.” Some of the Particular Baptists at this time were in the process of changing their name to Regular Baptists. The designation “Separate Baptists” endured only to about 1789 (the year our church was founded). The Separates and the Regulars signed an agreement which ended with the statement, “we are united and desire hereafter that the names, Regular and Separate, be buried in oblivion and that from henceforth we shall be known by the name of the United Baptist Churches.” The Haw River Church at Bynum was a “daughter” church of Sandy Creek and inasmuch as our first preacher, Thomas Cate, was baptized there, we can claim to be a “grand daughter” church of Sandy Creek. Stearns’ brand of religion was so successful that in 1758 he was able to form his flock of churches into the Sandy Creek Association. Within a few more years Separate Baptist churches had spread into Virginia and South Carolina. A contemporary Baptist historian has written, “I make bold to say that these Separate Baptists have proved to be the most remarkable body of Christians America has ever known.” It is hard to deny his words. Today, the largest Protestant denomination in America is the Southern Baptist Convention. The General Baptists did not create this enormous movement nor did the Particulars. It all began with the Separates at Sandy Creek under the stewardship of Shubal Stearns. Ed Johnson .
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