“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.

Orthodox Radicals

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

Conclusion

The conclusion considers how the book’s central argument might impinge more broadly upon the widespread historiographical assumption that one can appropriately and coherently describe a distinctive “Baptist” identity during the English Revolution and Interregnum. The labels with which we describe the past inevitably presuppose and project an interpretation of that past. But these embedded interpretations are almost always implicit rather than explicit and often inherited from historiographical predecessors rather than chosen with intention and care. Religious labels often confuse rather than clarify, and it is not at all obvious that the labels affixed to mid-seventeenth-century “Baptists” have helped to clarify the self-identity of the men and women they purport to describe.