“All things are become new”

The Particular Baptists of the Philadelphia Association benefited tremendously from the revivals of the Great Awakening, but at the same time felt their distinctively Baptist identity threatened by the interdenominational nature of the movement, its de-emphasis on local church accountability, and its loosening of restrictions on who could speak on behalf of God. This chapter explores how Hart and the Philadelphia Association navigated these tensions in the 1740s, and how in that context Hart experienced a “regular call” to ministry. In 1749 Hart agreed to relocate to Charleston, South Carolina, where the Baptists of the South were few, weak, and divided; he would spend the next thirty years transferring a combination of Philadelphia Association church order and Great Awakening revivalism to the Baptists of the South.