Today, the South Carolinians of the Old South are often depicted as a very provincial, even isolated, people. The classicist Basil Gildersleeve once said, “I was a Charlestonian first, Carolinian next, then a Southerner.” It was of course Sen. John C. Calhoun who became the great champion of states’ rights, sparking the Nullification Crisis in 1832 (ironically enough against President Andrew Jackson, born in the Waxhaws region of South Carolina). In 1858, South Carolina Sen. James Henry Hammond exclaimed with Southern pride on the Senate floor, “Cotton is King.” However, South Carolina Baptist history attests to the fact that Baptists in the Palmetto state were by no means insulated from the world around them. They could be remarkably well-read. The following are three lessons we can learn from our spiritual forbears:
1. South Carolina Baptists were people of the Book.
When pastor of FBC Charleston Richard Furman delivered the eulogy for his dear friend and rural revivalist Rev. Edmund Botsford in 1820, he described him as “a moderate Calvinist: yet his sentiments were not formed by any human system, but by what he considered the true meaning of the word of God.” By most standards, Botsford was “unlearned,” but he knew his Bible well. Botsford’s devotion to “the true meaning of the word of God” was true for most pastors throughout South Carolina, including Furman himself. Although subscribing to the Charleston Confession, Furman submitted to Holy Scripture first and foremost. At Furman’s passing, his friend and pastor W.T. Brantly recalled that Furman believed “it accorded better with Christian wisdom to adopt an unmutilated Revelation, than to press it by forced constructions into the service of a system.” At Brantly’s funeral, his former student Richard Fuller averred, “He loved the Bible, and studied the Bible, and preached the Bible, — preached it as it is, — neither seeking to be wise nor orthodox above what is written.”
2. South Carolina Baptists read more than the Bible.
Even though Furman was from the hills of Santee and had no formal education, he was by no means an uncultured hillbilly. He read from Milton, Young, Pope, Addison, Butler, and others. He also loved to read Greek classics like Homer and Longinus and Quintillian. Perhaps the most well-read South Carolina Baptist of all was James P. Boyce, who was shaped significantly by the educational program that Furman left behind. Boyce built a large library prior to the Civil War but eventually had to diminish his purchases due to the hard economic times after the war. Still, it was not uncommon to see Boyce reading arguments against David Hume’s skepticism or consuming a work by Plato or Francis Wayland’s work on moral philosophy. A young Basil Manly Sr. once delivered an oration in 1821 entitled “The Necessity of a Liberal Cultivation of the Mind,” defending a curriculum that included the ancient classics.
3. South Carolina Baptists believed that all Christians should read.
While believers must be “doers of the Word and not just hearers only” (James 1:22), Baptists in South Carolina trusted that reading was a way to cultivate the life of the mind and to prepare ourselves for a lifetime of loving God with our minds. In 1839, attempts were made to combine a classical school with a manual labor school, emphasizing both physical and mental activity. State Baptist newspapers and published sermons attested to just how much Baptists relished the gift of reading. Had not the Lord delivered his good news in words of truth?
May South Carolina Baptists continue to value the gift of reading, and most especially the sum of His Word (Psalm 119:160).
— Obbie Tyler Todd is teaching pastor and theologian-in-residence at Cross Community Church in Beaufort, S.C., and adjunct professor of Church History at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Todd and his wife, Kelly, have twins, Roman and Ruby.
