Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-750632-5
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 348 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 687 g

Baptists in America began the eighteenth century a small, scattered, often harassed sect in a vast sea of religious options. By the early nineteenth century, they were a unified, powerful, and rapidly-growing denomination, poised to send missionaries to the other side of the world. One of the most influential yet neglected leaders in that transformation was Oliver Hart, longtime pastor of the Charleston Baptist Church. Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America is the first modern biography of Hart, arguably the most important evangelical leader in the pre-Revolutionary South.

During his thirty years in Charleston, Hart emerged as the region's most important Baptist denominational architect. His outspoken patriotism forced him to flee Charleston when the British army invaded Charleston in 1780, but he left behind a southern Baptist people forever changed by his energetic ministry. Hart's accommodating stance toward slavery enabled him and the white Baptists who followed him to reach the center of southern society, but also eventually doomed the national Baptist denomination of Hart's dreams.

More than a biography, Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America seamlessly intertwines Hart's story with that of eighteenth-century American Baptists, providing one of the most thorough accounts to date of this important and understudied religious group's development. This book makes a significant contribution to the study of Baptist life and evangelicalism in the pre-Revolutionary South and beyond.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Eric C.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christliche Kirchen, Konfessionen, Denominationen Protestantismus, evangelische und protestantische Kirchen Baptisten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Biographien & Autobiographien: Historisch, Politisch, Militärisch
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein Organisation & Institutionen von Kirchen und Gemeinden
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1. "The humble Baptists": Oliver Hart's Baptist Community

- 2. "The power of religion greatly displayed": Baptists and the Great Awakening

- 3. "All things are become new": Moving to the South

- 4. "Bringing many souls home to Jesus Christ": Moderate Revivalism in Charleston

- 5. "A regular Confederation": Laying the Foundations of the Baptist South

- 6. "Every day brings fresh wonders!": The 1754 Charleston Revival

- 7. "Seals of my ministry": Training the Next Generation

- 8. "Promoting so laudable a Design": Baptist Development in the 1760s

- 9. "Comforts and mercies, losses and crosses": A Transitional Season

- 10. "The rising glory of this continent": The American Revolution

- 11. "Directed in the path of duty": Staying the Course

- 12. "The Baptist Interest": A Respectable Denomination in a New Nation

- 13. "All the Baptists on the Continent": A Dream Briefly Realized

Über Autor(innen)

Eric C. Smith is Senior Pastor of Sharon Baptist Church in Savannah, Tennessee, and Adjunct Professor of Historical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also the author of Order & Ardor: The Revival Spirituality of Oliver Hart and the Regular Baptists of Eighteenth-Century South Carolina (2018).