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  • Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860 by Richard C. Traylor
  • John Saillant
Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860. By Richard C. Traylor. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2015. Pp. [x], 278. $47.50, ISBN 978-1-62190-095-5.)

Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860 explores why the area that would come to be called Kentucky attracted settlers from the Carolinas, Virginia, and the mid-Atlantic states and became the home of many Baptist churches that grew into the South. Between 1776 and 1785, eighteen Baptist churches were founded in Kentucky. After revivals in 1799, both Baptist and Methodist churches gained members in Kentucky, but Baptists outpaced their evangelical rivals in membership growth. Kentucky became a zone where late-colonial evangelicalism was transformed by westward migration—a seedbed of Baptist churches for the expanding South.

Richard C. Traylor begins by describing the importance of conversion, baptism, and communion in the Baptist church. Like historians Donald G. Mathews and William G. McLoughlin, Traylor argues that these rituals affiliated Baptists to a predestining God and absorbed believers into an orderly context that many [End Page 402] people found necessary as they migrated from colonial-era centers of authority. The second chapter places Baptist preachers at the vanguard of what Nathan O. Hatch has described as the democratization of American religion. Baptist preachers came from many walks of life and often served the church without a salary. They spoke plainly and used metaphors that would have been familiar to the masses. However, this egalitarianism had a price: when Baptist preachers failed, their congregations might jeer—one cost of democracy’s cutting edge.

Next is a solid chapter about the founding of different Baptist churches and associations, followed by a chapter on Alexander Campbell’s challenge to Baptist theology and a theological rejuvenation inspired by Andrew Fuller. Campbell believed Baptist theology should be stripped down to first-century essentials, including immersion and emersion. By 1832, Campbell had gained a following from about a quarter of Kentucky Baptists, yet this exodus opened the door for a revivification of Calvinism led by Fuller. Although predestinarian, Fuller argued (against traditional Calvinism) for an unlimited atonement. This conviction fostered a more global, and less local, perspective for Baptist theology, which was reflected in many Baptist churches, missionary efforts, and institutions of higher learning.

Slimmer chapters on women and African Americans conclude the book. Traylor argues that because both women and African Americans seem to have found value for themselves in churches dominated by white men, the source of the Baptist impulse must have been deep within southerners. A coda emphasizes that as Kentucky Baptists became less sectarian they confronted national issues of slavery, temperance, and accord with other denominations. Baptist localism had partly shielded congregations from these searing matters, but after 1840 the shields collapsed.

While studies of individual colonies and states have existed since the advent of American historical scholarship, they have new urgency in the early twenty-first century. Shifts in public perceptions of historians’ work have shaken the ground that once supported a panoply of research efforts. State history is, however, one effort that should thrive today. State history is common in schools. Many public universities offer a course in the history of their state. As historians enter the profession, they might approach state history not as encyclopedic knowledge of one state but as transferrable skills that foster scholarship on many topics under a state-history umbrella. An upswing in state history will require good graduate training, scholarly works, and attention within public universities. Born of Water and Spirit is exemplary as a work that meets the opportunities of the early twenty-first century and provides a solid analysis of Baptists in transition from the southern seaboard colonies into the southern states.

John Saillant
Western Michigan University
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