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| Part of a series of articles on Baptists |
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Historical Background |
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Doctrinal distinctives |
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Pivotal figures |
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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 Proverbs 22:28:
| “ | Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. | ” |
Contents |
Definition
Scholars have offered several proposed definitions of Landmarkism, most of which agree on several fundamental aspects of the movement, but nevertheless differ at significant points.
Points of consensus
Most theologians and historians who have dealt with Landmarkism have agreed that the following ecclesiological convictions were inherent to the system: [1]
The exclusive validity of Baptist churches
Although different champions of the Landmark Baptist cause have identified different required characteristics, or "marks," that validate a legitimate Baptist church, all varieties of Landmarkism stipulate that legitimate Baptist churches are the only legitimate churches. According to Landmarkism, congregations of other denominational varieties are merely religious gatherings, or "societies," with no claim to the title "church."
The invalidity of non-Baptist churchly acts
Landmark Baptists have refused to recognize as valid any baptisms or ordinations performed in circumstances other than under the auspices of a Baptist church. Thus, Landmark Baptists have declined to allow non-Baptists to preach in Landmark Baptist churches and have required prospective members who have received "pedobaptism" or "alien immersion" to be baptized by a Baptist church before receiving them into membership. Expressed as a syllogism, the Landmark Baptist argument is:
- Major premise: To be valid, Christian ordinations and baptisms must be performed by a valid New Testament church.
- Minor premise: Only valid Baptist churches are valid New Testament churches.
- Conclusion: Therefore, only ordinations and baptisms performed by valid Baptist churches are valid Christian ordinations and baptisms.
Disputed points
Beyond this basic argument, scholars have proposed other elements as inherent to Landmarkism, but these do not enjoy the same scholarly consensus as the foregoing ecclesiological kernel.
Church succession
Baptist successionism is a theological theory concerning Baptist history prior to 1609. Many prominent Baptist historians up through the nineteenth century emphasized in some manner the antiquity of Baptist ideas. This was an exercise in apologetics, designed to debunk criticisms of Baptist thought as a more contemporary innovation. In particular, Baptist historians labored to demonstrate the antiquity of believer's baptism and, to some degree, of congregationalist church governance. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, most Landmark Baptists adopted English Baptist pastor G. H. Orchard's assertion in his book, A Concise of the Baptists (1838), that actual organized Baptist congregations had existed at all times throughout the preceding centuries all the way back to the New Testament era. Orchard wrote:
| “ | During the first three centuries, Christian congregations, all over the East, subsisted in separate independent bodies, unsupported by government, and consequently without any secular power over one another. All this time they were Baptist churches… | „ |
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—G. H. Orchard[2] |
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Believing that their origins predate those even of Roman Catholicism/Eastern Orthodoxy (having both been one before the East-West Schism in 1054 AD), Landmark Baptists have generally refused to refer to themselves as Protestants (Note that Church Succession has no connection with the doctrine of Apostolic Succession to which Landmarkists do not ascribe). Not all Landmark Baptists subscribed to this particular concept of Baptist history, but it did come to dominate Landmark Baptist thinking about Baptist origins.
Non-church-intercommunion
Baptists debated as early as the eighteenth century about whether churches should allow Christians to participate in the Lord's Supper before receiving valid baptism. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, some Landmark Baptists began to assert that Baptist churches should not allow even Baptists from other congregations to participate in the Lord's Supper away from their home congregation. This idea was controversial among Landmark Baptists, although it did eventually build strong support within the movement. James Madison Pendleton was one prominent Landmark Baptist who vehemently opposed this idea. The Earliest practioner of this practice known as "closed communion" was the Lord Jesus, Himself, who only allowed the faithful members of the first church to participate in the inaugural observance of the ordinance. The oldest writings that express the view that communion is a local church ordinance are the Biblical Epistles to Corinth from the Apostle Paul known as First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. In these two letters alone the Apostle uses the word "churches" in the plural 14 times to refer to different congregations in different locations. The 17 times in these letters that Paul uses the word church in the singular he is clearly referring either to the Corinthian church specifically (as in I Corinthians 1:1, "the church of God which is AT Corinth"), or to a local church in general (as in I Corinthians 4:17, "every where in every church"). In the same letters to the same local church Paul stated both truths that the church in Corinth is the body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:27) and that the Lord's Supper confirms the participants as "one body" of Christ by the sharing of the "one bread" (I Corinthians 10:17).
Gospel Missions
Baptist missionary Tarleton Perry Crawford proposed in the late nineteenth century a theory of missiology that criticized at several points the missionary structures and methodologies of Baptist conventions and societies. Crawford's theories were popular among Landmark Baptists. Authors like James Tull[3] have analyzed Gospel Missions as a submovement within Landmarkism. Adrian Lamkin has disputed this claim.[citation needed]
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 by non-recognition of non-Baptist congregations, and then published their findings as the Cotton Grove Resolutions.[4] 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. Landmarkism as explained by Graves consists of four ancient landmarks of God's people which may not be moved by man because they are established by God. These four Landmarks are:
1) The existence of a personal God; the Creator of all things.
2) God is not mysterious but has revealed Himself to man.
3) Jesus Christ is God the Son, the personal revelation of God to man and the Savior of man.
4) The Bible is God's Word and is the sole rule of faith and practice for Christians and churches.
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 Re-Set 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?
While acknowledging that Landmarkism as a movement among the Baptist churches originated in the 1850s, the Landmark Baptists maintain that the principles of Landmarkism pre-date the Landmark Baptist movement. They see the Landmark Baptist movement as an attempt to restore and perpetuate Biblical principles which were being supplanted by religious progressivism and ecumenism.
Within the historical records of the European Baptists (such as the associational records of the Particular Baptist Churches in England 1650-1660) there is evidence of some Landmark principles before the rise of the Landmark Baptist movement in America. These principles came with the Baptists to America and are strongly reflected in the records of the Philadelphia Baptist Association.
In 1811 Jesse Mercer, namesake of Mercer University, wrote a circular letter for the Georgia Baptist State Association [5] which defended the Baptist rejection of alien immersion on the basis of Baptist successionism. In it he equated the rejection of alien immersion by the Baptist churches to a virgin keeping herself chaste and spotless. The year Mercer wrote this circular was the year James Madison Pendleton was born and when James Robinson Graves was nine years old and Amos Cooper Dayton was two years old.
Ironically, the concepts of Landmarkism were so ingrained in the Baptist mindset, that, as James Madison Pendleton noted in his article "An Old Landmark Reset", a number of Baptist writers who strongly opposed the Landmark movement, themselves wrote books and articles advocating essentially Landmark doctrines.
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 conjectured that early English Baptists prior to 1641 had not baptized by immersion. John T. Christian, who also did extensive research in the primary sources, published vigorous rebuttals to Whitsitt's conjectures. Through the efforts of John T. Christian, T.T. Eaton and Benajah Harvey Carroll the Landmark party 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 and paved the way for the introduction of theological modernism in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Twentieth-century Landmarkism
Landmark Baptist and Denominations
The word "denomination" in ecclesiological terms can never rightly be applied to Baptist fellowships or movements. No authority ever supersedes the authority of a local Baptist church. 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.
Landmark Baptist Associations
In early twentieth century, two major separations from the Southern Baptists occurred in the areas of strongest Landmark influence. In 1900, S.A. Hayden led a group out of the Baptist General Convention of Texas to form the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas. Ben Bogard led a group out of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention to form the General Association of Baptist Churches in Arkansas in 1902 which merged with like minded Baptists in other states (particularly Oklahoma where the Landmarkers had formed a state association prior to the formation of a statewide Southern Baptist affiliated organization in that state) to form The General Association of Baptists in the United States of America in 1905. In 1924, at a meeting in Texarkana, these churches voted to merge with the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas to form the American Baptist Association (ABA). In 1950 the ABA split and the group which separated is now known as the Baptist Missionary Association of America with which the old BMA of Texas now affiliates.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Landmark ideas are most closely associated with the American Baptist Association, the Baptist Missionary Association of America, and the Interstate & Foreign Landmark Missionary Baptist Association. Many Independent Baptist churches and most Old Time Missionary Baptist churches (many of which pre-date the Southern Baptist Convention and never affiliated with it) 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
Landmarkism continued as the dominant ecclesiology among Southern Baptists well into the twentieth century and some Landmark concepts continue to influence the Southern Baptist Convention as evidenced by the recent decision of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to require its missionaries to abstain from receiving alien immersions. In this vein it should be remembered that the original separation of the Landmark churches from the Southern Baptist Convention was as much a reaction against Conventionism itself than to any perceived drift of Southern Baptists away from Landmark principles of ecclesiology. Many Southern Baptists have no interest in Landmarkism and even those who embrace some Landmark concepts of ecclesiology usually disassociate themselves from the Landmark movement. There are exceptions to this, particularly in the Mississippi River valley (Southern Illinois, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana), as well as in parts of Texas, Michigan, and Oregon. There are many Southern Baptists in these areas who are strong landmarkers in both doctrine and in name.
External links
- Old Landmarkism: What Is It?
- Three Witnesses for the Baptists, Curtis Pugh
- A Study of the Antecedents of Landmarkism, by LeRoy Benjamin Hogue
- Perpetuity of the Lord’s Church
Footnotes
- ^ Source Needed
- ^ Orchard, G. H.; James Robinson Graves (1855). A Concise History of Foreign Baptists. p. 36.
- ^ Tull, James E. High-Church Baptists in the South: The Origin, Nature, and Influence of Landmarkism. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2000
- ^ Hughey, Sam. "Preface". Old Landmarkism. The Reformed Reader. http://www.reformedreader.org/history/graves/ol/preface.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-30.
- ^ Mercer, Jesse. "Circular Letter for Georgia Baptist Association (1811)". Baptist History Homepage. http://www.geocities.com/baptist_documents/1811cl_mercer.html.
Additional Sources concerning Landmark history
- Associational Minutes of the Particular Baptist Churches of England, 1650-1660
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