Landmarkism

Landmarkism is a type of Baptist ecclesiology. Landmarkism may also appear as Old Landmarkism in some works. Adherents are normally styled Landmark Baptists or simply Landmarkers within the United States, but are known as Landmarkists in the United Kingdom. The term Landmarkism originates in

Church representation

Some Baptists in the Southern Baptist Convention objected to the practice of apportioning messengers to the various congregations according to their respective numbers of members or dollars contributed. These Baptists insisted that each local congregation have equal representation in convention bodies. This issue was prominent in controversies provoked by Samuel Augustus Hayden and Benjamin M. Bogard. The majority of scholarly analysts have tied this dispute to Landmarkism, but recent dissertations by Joseph Early and Bart Barber have challenged the link between Landmarkism and these controversies.

Major personalities

The Great Triumvirate

James Robinson Graves

Through his "Tennessee Baptist" newspaper, James Robinson Graves popularized Landmarkism, building for it a virtual hegemony among Baptists west of the Appalachians. Graves was especially popular in the states of the lower Mississippi River Valley and Texas. In 1851, Graves called a meeting of likeminded Baptists at the Cotton Grove Baptist Church near Jackson, Tennessee to address five questions:

# Can Baptists with their principles on the Scriptures, consistently recognize those societies not organized according to the Jerusalem church, but possessing different government, different officers, a different class of members, different ordinances, doctrines and practices as churches of Christ?
# Ought they to be called gospel churches or churches in a religious sense?
# Can we consistently recognize the ministers of such irregular and unscriptural bodies as gospel ministers?
# Is it not virtually recognizing them as official ministers to invite them into our pulpits or by any other act that would or could be construed as such recognition?
# Can we consistently address as brethren those professing Christianity who not only have not the doctrine of Christ and walk not according to his commandments but are arrayed in direct and bitter opposition to them?

The majority of the gathered Baptists resolved these questions to the disparagement of non-Baptist congregations, and then published their findings as the Cotton Grove Resolutions. [cite web |url=http://www.reformedreader.org/history/graves/ol/preface.htm |title=Preface |accessdate=2008-06-30 |last=Hughey |first=Sam |work=Old Landmarkism |publisher=The Reformed Reader] The Cotton Grove Resolutions essentially comprise the organizational document of the Landmark Baptist movement.

In addition to his many articles in the "Tennessee Baptist", Graves wrote "Old Landmarkism: What Is It?" He served as the publisher for the two other members of the Landmark Triumvirate.

James Madison Pendleton

James Madison Pendleton was the most scholarly and perhaps the most focused (or at least the most minimalist) member of the Landmark Triumvirate. Pendleton's book "An Old Landmark" gave the movement its name. His "Church Manual" was also influential in perpetuating Landmark Baptist ecclesiology. Ironically, although Pendleton was the only native Southerner in the Landmark Triumvirate, he was the only member to oppose slavery and secession. As a result, his influence among Southern Baptists declined precipitously in the days leading up to the American Civil War. A recent dissertation by James White has provided the most thorough treatment of Pendleton's theology to date.

Amos Cooper Dayton

Amos Cooper Dayton's major contribution to Landmarkism was the novel "Theodosia Ernest".

Other influential Landmark Baptists

* John Newton Hall (1849-1905), publisher of the Kentucky "Baptist Flag" newspaper, was a forceful advocate both of Landmarkism and of the Gospel Mission Movement.
* Benjamin Marquis Bogard, after leading a schism out of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention became the most popular leader of Landmarkism into the twentieth century.
* Samuel Augustus Hayden led a schismatic movement in Texas that many have associated with Landmarkism.
* Thomas Treadwell Eaton championed Landmark sentiment in Kentucky and led the charge against anti-Landmark scholar William Heth Whitsitt.
* John T. Christian prolifically defended the Landmark Baptist conception of Baptist successionism.
* James Milton Carroll authored one of the most enduring Landmark Baptist publications, "The Trail of Blood".
* A number of prominent Southern Baptist leaders were also Landmark Baptists (e. g., Benajah Harvey Carroll), although their primary contributions to Baptist history lay in fields other than ecclesiology.

History of the movement

Landmarkism before 1851?

Many adherents of Landmarkism dispute that the movement originated in the 1850s. Instead, they claim that the Landmark Baptist movement has apostolic origins dating to the First Century. Most scholars from outside the movement dispute this claim. In fact, the central thesis of James Tull's dissertation was the demonstration that Landmarkism did not represent (as Tull termed it) "historic Baptist ecclesiology."

It is interesting to note that within the associational records of Particular Baptist Churches in England 1650-1660, clear historic evidence exists that Baptist churches did indeed hold to this Landmarkist view before the year 1851.

These Landmarkist policies came with the Particular Baptists to the United States and of course are reflected in the records of the Philadelphia Baptist Association.

Antebellum Landmarkism

The Landmark controversy erupted into Southern Baptist life in the 1850s, fueled by the press influence of Graves. At times, vitriolic conflict between Landmark and non-Landmark elements within the Southern Baptist Convention clashed during this epoch. The epitome of such conflict was the struggle between Graves and Robert Boyte Crawford Howell. By the late 1850s, Landmarkism had become the default ecclesiology of the Western Frontier.

War and Reconstruction

When Nashville, Tennessee fell to the Union Army, Graves was displaced from his seat of power. Furthermore, during Reconstruction more pressing matters than ecclesiology stole Baptist imagination, as they struggled for the survival of their churches and denominational institutions. During this period, no other point of view gained ground against Landmarkism, but neither did Landmarkism progress.

The New South

Landmarkism returned to the forefront with renewed vigor after Reconstruction. In the final years of his life, Graves led the Landmark movement from Memphis, Tennessee. Graves died in 1891, with Landmarkism at the zenith of its acceptance.

The Whitsitt controversy

William Heth Whitsitt, the third president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, presented the first major academic challenge from within Baptist ranks to the theory of church successionism. On the basis of primary source research in England, Whitsitt wrote that early English Baptists prior to 1641 had not baptized by immersion. Enraged Landmark Baptists successfully ousted Whitsitt in 1899. Ironically, this Landmark victory ensconced Edgar Young Mullins into the presidency of the seminary—Mullins became one of the most influential non-Landmark Baptists in the Southern Baptist Convention during the twentieth century.

Twentieth-century Landmarkism

Landmark Baptist denominations

Though numerous churches and some organizations use the terms "Landmark" and "Landmark Baptist" in their name, there is no identifiable sub-group of Baptists known as the Landmark Baptist Church. A "Landmark Baptist church" is one that holds the idea of "Landmarkism" or Landmark ecclesiology. A basic Baptist belief is that each local Baptist church is autonomous. Therefore it is imperative to use the lower case "c" in church unless referring to a particular local Baptist church.

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, two major ruptures occurred among Southern Baptists in the "Landmark Belt" (the area of strongest Landmark influence, including Arkansas and Texas). In Texas, Hayden led a group out of the Baptist General Convention of Texas to form the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas. In Arkansas, Bogard led a group out of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention to form the General Association of Baptist Churches in Arkansas. The General Association of Baptists in the United States of America was formed in 1905, which gave way to the American Baptist Association (ABA) in 1924 in Texarkana, Texas; the BMA of Texas also became affiliated with the ABA but continued as a state organization.

Joseph Early has attributed the Hayden schism to interpersonal conflict in the BGCT rather than to Landmarkism. Bart Barber has attributed the Bogard schism to heightened agrarianism in Arkansas and the political career of Arkansas Governor Jeff Davis. Further division has fractured the ABA as the twentieth century has progressed.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Landmark ideas are most closely associated with the ABA, the Baptist Missionary Association of America (with which the BMA of Texas is now affiliated), and the Interstate & Foreign Landmark Missionary Baptist Association. Many Independent Baptist churches and most unaffiliated Missionary Baptist local associations also hold this ecclesiology. Some other Baptists, such as Primitive Baptists, hold ecclesiological viewpoints that are very similar to Landmarkism.

Landmark Baptist sentiment in the Southern Baptist Convention

Landmark ideas still exist within the Southern Baptist Convention, but scholars have differed as to their extent and influence. William W. Barnes interpreted the Hayden and Bogard schisms as a catharsis of Landmarkism from the SBC, enabling the advent of a golden age of Southern Baptist growth and cooperation.Fact|date=September 2007 James Tull has posited an "insidious covert Landmarkism in the SBC serving as a constant impediment to such (according to Tull) noble causes as ecumenism and moderate Baptist theology."Fact|date=September 2008 Stephen M. Stookey has treated Landmarkism as a unifying force in the SBC that staved off potential division along Fundamentalist/Modernist lines. [Stookey, Stephen M. " [/p/articles/mi_m0NXG/is_3_39/ai_n8685616/pg_12 Theological influences affecting Baptist development in the Northwest.] " "Baptist History and Heritage". Summer-Fall 2004.]

External links

* [http://www.pbministries.org/History/J.%20R.%20Graves/Old%20Landmarkism/old_landmarkism.htm Old Landmarkism: What Is It?]
* [http://users.aol.com/libcfl/witness1.htm Three Witnesses for the Baptists, Curtis Pugh]
* [http://landmarkism.tripod.com/index.html A Study of the Antecedents of Landmarkism] , by LeRoy Benjamin Hogue
* [http://www.thebaptist.org/Perpetuity.htm Perpetuity of the Lord’s Church]

Footnotes

Additional Sources concerning Landmark history

*Associational Minutes of the Particular Baptist Churches of England, 1650-1660