Thesis Review

"GALVANIZED BY THE GOSPEL: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BAPTIST MISSIONS AND THE ANTI-MISSION RESPONSE" is a "master's thesis" submitted by Anna B. Holdorf for Boise State University in 2012 (here). I read through this thesis and copied these few notes. Let me share them along with some observations thereupon. 

Holdorf wrote:

"While antimissionists tended to be premillennialists like their Puritan forebears, it was postmillennialism that particularly thrived in the early 1800s." (pg. 40)

Is that so? Today's "Primitive Baptists" (the "antimissionists") are supposedly 90% Amillennial. Was that true with the first generation of PBs (1830s-1860s)? According to Holdorf, the antis "tended to be premillennialists." If that is true (she does not prove her statement), then here is another marked difference between today's Hardshells and their founding fathers. I know that Elder and Historian Sylvester Hassell was a strong Premillennialist. From my reading of the founders of Hardshellism I think she is probably right.

Holdorf wrote:

"Anti-mission Baptists, who esteemed the Bible as the sole religious authority on earth, found it difficult to understand why it was necessary for teachers and theologians to instruct others how to interpret the Bible. After all, they pointed out, Jesus himself had “commenced his ministry…without education.”167 Daniel Parker boasted, as did many other anti-missionists, that he was uneducated. He wrote that he had “no knowledge of the English grammar, only as my bible has taught me.” Parker further noted that the doctrinal “errors” that marked the beliefs of pro-mission Baptists “nearly all originated amongst the wise and learned.”168 Catholicism, he claimed, first gave education “a seat in religion,” and he warned Baptists against assuming characteristics of the “Popish dominion” for themselves.169" (pg. 59)

This is true and the effects of such a philosophy are still evident today among "Primitive Baptists." 

Holdorf wrote:

"Anti-mission Baptists also attacked theological education in the form of Sunday schools as a way “to bend the youthful mind to answer the mission purposes” and “a plan to release parents from their obligations to govern their families on the Lord’s day, when they have no right to transfer that duty to another person” according to scriptural guidelines.170 While the Bible “enjoin[ed] upon parents to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” the same scriptures “forb[ade] the idea of parents intrusting [sic] the religious education of their children to giddy, unregenerated young persons.”171 Those who sent their children to Sunday schools defied biblical standards for parenting, and were deceived by the incorrect doctrine of the missionaries. As Sunday schools were “the product of the mission principle” and “composed of auxiliary societies”—and, therefore, “without authority in the word of God”—faithful Baptists should reject them, Parker argued.172" (59-60)

Agreed. Observe the ridiculousness of the argument against Sunday schools! Parents cannot delegate authority for others to teach their children! Yet, they want them to sit with adults and be taught by the preacher! Consistency thou art a jewel.

Holdorf wrote:

"It is important to note that, at least at the commencement of the mission movement, promission Baptists still held to Calvinist doctrine despite anti-missionists’ arguments otherwise. To missionaries and their supporters, evangelism did not necessarily conflict with beliefs in predestination and God’s sovereignty." (pg. 67)

Many Hardshells have told the falsehood that the 1832 division was over Calvinism or the Doctrines of Grace. But, that is a falsehood as Haldorf shows. Many of the supporters of missions were five point Calvinists and even founders of the Southern Baptist Convention.