Landmarkism
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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.
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[edit] 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.
[edit] Points of consensus
Most theologians and historians who have dealt with Landmarkism have agreed that the following ecclesiological convictions were inherent to the system:
[edit] 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."
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Church succession
Church succession is a theory of Baptist history before 1609—a type of Baptist successionism. Virtually all 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 an innovation (a word that did not, in seventeenth-century religious circles, enjoy the positive connotation that it has today). 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 G. H. Orchard's more ambitious assertion[citation needed] that actual organized Baptist congregations had existed at all times throughout the preceding centuries all the way back to the New Testament era. Believing that their origins predate those even of Roman Catholicism, Landmark Baptists have generally refused to refer to themselves as Protestants. Not all Landmark Baptists subscribed to this particular concept of Baptist history, but it did come to dominate Landmark Baptist thinking about Baptist origins.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 have analyzed Gospel Missions as a submovement within Landmarkism. Adrian Lamkin has disputed this claim.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Major personalities
[edit] The Great Triumvirate
[edit] James Robinson Graves
James Robinson Graves is the undisputed father of Landmarkism. Through his Tennessee Baptist newspaper, Graves popularized Landmarkism, building for it a virtual hegemony among Southern 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 Southern 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. 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.
[edit] 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 War Between the States. A recent dissertation by James White has provided the most thorough treatment of Pendleton's theology to date.
[edit] Amos Cooper Dayton
Amos Cooper Dayton's major contribution to Landmarkism was the novel Theodosia Ernest.
[edit] 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.
[edit] History of the movement
[edit] Landmarkism before 1851?
Many adherents of Landmarkism dispute that the movement originated in the 1850s.[citation needed] Instead, they claim that the Landmark Baptist movement has apostolic origins. 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."
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Twentieth-century Landmarkism
[edit] 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.
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 attribued 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.
[edit] 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. 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. Stephen M. Stookey has treated Landmarkism as a unifying force in the SBC that staved off potential division along Fundamentalist/Modernist lines.
[edit] External links
[edit] Footnotes
- A Study of the Antecedents of Landmarkism, by LeRoy Benjamin Hogue
