Landmarkism Debate
Submitted by dajesuspimp on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Social Issues
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Landmarkism Debate
Landmarkism, what is it? How did it start? Whom did it affect? Who were the important players? What do they believe? Is it still influential today? This paper will attempt to answer these questions and tell how the Landmarkers have been an influential people in and out of the Southern Baptist life.
Landmarkism, what is it? Landmarkism is a Southern Baptist phenomenon that grew out of the changing religious environment of the South in the early 1850s. The theology called Landmarkism heavily influenced Southern Baptists in the first half of the century, particularly in parts of the South and Midwest.
The name of Old Landmarkers came in this way. In 1854, J. M. Pendleton, of Kentucky, wrote an essay titled: "Ought Baptists to recognize Pedobaptist preachers (preachers who were baptised as an infant and never re-baptised as an adult) as gospel minister? This essay was commissioned and later published by Graves under the title, "An Old Landmark Re-set.""
The name stuck as Baptists in the North and South who did not follow Pendleton's or Graves' views, by way of reproach, called all Baptists who accepted Pendleton's conclusions "Old Landmarkers". Graves and Pendleton preferred the term "Strict Baptists" as a reflection of their highly fundamental views. They considered their view to be the "principles which all true Baptists, in all ages, have professed to believe".
How did it start? This quote from Graves' book shows one of the reasons why the Landmark movement started. "In 1846, pulpit affiliations, union meetings, receiving the immersions of Pedobaptists and Campbellites, and inviting Pedobaptists, as "evangelical ministers," to seats in our associations and conventions, even the Southern Baptist, had become, with but few exceptions, general throughout the South" . An editorial by John Lightfoot Waller in the Western Baptist Review sparked controversy as he defended the validity of a Baptist minister who received his baptism as a...
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