Born of water and spirit: Popular religion and early American Baptists in Kentucky, 1776--1860

From 1776 to 1860, the Baptist movement in America grew at a staggering rate, rising from about 50,000 adherents to over one million. As a result of the movement's early and continued growth, it has come to represent one of the most influential religious groups in American history. Yet, of all the large, popular religious movements in early America, the Baptists are by far the most neglected by historians and the least understood. If one wishes to understand evangelical religion in America, one must understand the Baptists. Beyond denominational histories, no scholarly work addresses the broad influence of the movement in religious history. In filling this historiographic gap, this dissertation argues three main points. First, that of all the popular religious movements that swept the American landscape in the early republic, the Baptists best resonated the national democratic ethic and represented the kind of adherent-driven religion which succeeded in that environment. Second, that the common, foundational elements of theology and polity in the variegated Baptist movement---what I label the "Baptist impulse"---allowed it to negotiate the tenuous line between the developing private and public worlds and between individual judgement and communal order. Third, it argues that this impulse contributed to the movement's long-term tenacity in the religious marketplace and provided a model that other popular and successful modern evangelical movements drew upon indirectly. Thus, modern evangelicalism, if anything, is "baptistic" in nature. The essence of this Baptist impulse can be found and effectively studied in early Kentucky, a representative state where the movement thrived despite identity crises, and where its future character developed because of them. In the midst of this, Baptists walked a cultural tightrope, wrestling with primitivism and modernization, and conforming with cultural norms while still offering a counter-cultural message. The research largely relies upon church and associational records from the period which reveal the collective actions and mentalities of hundreds of churches and tens of thousands of individuals.