Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Belief in contact with the spirit as the central religious experience always has created problems for Protestant Reformers who find many manifestations disturbing. As soon as the Anabaptists emerged around Zürich, Johannes Kessler described Margaret Hottinger. She
"undertook to speak of things that nobody could understand, as it she were so deeply raised up in God that nobody could comprehend her speech."
He added
"many of her followers declared that whoever speaks the most or can do the most unusual which nobody can comprehend or evaluate, those were held to be the most devout and most immersed in God." [1]
A Benedictine convert responded by formulating a confession that condemned those who "practice and observe the freedom of the Spirit and of Christ." [2] Michael Sattler created a congregational church structure, rather than one based on experience, and excluded women from leadership positions. [3]
In Scotland, Protestants held four-day sacramental communions that began with fasting on Thursday and ended with a thanksgiving sermon on Monday. [4] Sermons sometimes resulted in ecstatic experiences in the forms of dreams, visions, and unseen voices. Ministers did not condemn them, but selectively included references to them in their official accounts lest they attract the attention of hostile authorities. [5]
Both the Swiss and Scots treated contact with the spirit world as normal and desirable. Those affected by Calvinism treated such events as techniques to frighten individuals into conformity in the way described by Elnathan Davis in the post for 19 January 2020. Once converted, individuals had no desire to repeat the experience.
Eleazar Wheelock adopted George Whitefield’s methods after hearing him preach in 1740 in New England. He soon reported "between 30 or 40 I hope were converted while I was in town and many hundreds I believe were under concern." [6]
Other ministers began telling Wheelock that their sermons "were normally accompanied by shrieks, cries, and other disturbances of those converted." [7] John Lee wrote him
"Parsons had preached to 100 congregants, and ‘a great number cried out with such anguish as I never See it.’ Many were ‘greatly wounded,’ and ‘11 or 12 persons fainted or nearly fainted’." [8]
Soon Wheelock’s brother-in-law was more affected than his audience. James Davenport wrote him "‘the difficulties of the work (of revival) are great’ and described a sermon in which ‘the Lord opened my mouth so that I scarcely knew how to shut it’." [9] He soon was claiming "special revelations from God." [10]
John Fea observed this introduction of divine inspiration created problems for his fellow clergymen "who rested their entire system of religious understanding and knowledge of God’s will on the Scriptural text." [11] They debated if he was "non compos mentis" or if he was "deluded and possessed with the Spirit of Satan." [12] Davenport recanted, and the Puritan ministers continued their old ways.
The problem arose again at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801 where people trembled and shouted. Warren Barton Stone recalled:
"Many, very many fell down, as men slain in battle, and continued for hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless state—sometimes for a few moments reviving, and exhibiting symptoms of life by a deep groan, or piercing shriek, or by a prayer for mercy most fervently uttered. After lying thus for hours, they obtained deliverance. The gloomy cloud, which had covered their faces, seemed gradually and visibly to disappear, and hope in smiles brightened into joy—they would rise shouting deliverance, and then would address the surrounding multitude in language truly eloquent and impressive." [13]
Presbyterians, who had sponsored the revival, condemned the results. Alexander Campbell accepted the revival’s methods, but distrusted those "drawn more by passion than by faith" and added
"We are generally suspicious of universal propositions depending upon one man’s reason or observation; and therefore, while we have always regarded many of those who come forward under such popular excitements as unfit for immersion." [14]
Like the Particular Baptists, Campbell’s followers in the Disciples of Christ felt it their duty to extirpate any rituals that treated contact with the spirits as anything other than terrifying. They converted a minister in a surviving Free Will Baptist church in Beaufort County, North Carolina. In 1844, Henry Smith then reorganized churches in Broad Creek, [15] Florence, [16] and Bay Creek. [17]
Not all were willing to accept the change. Jacob Utley tried to stop Smith in Broad Creek [18] and Florence. [19] The second faded away when Smith grew too old to pastor it. After 1858, "‘by non-attendance and negligence the church became and now is in a deplorable condition.’ Some had united with other churches and some had ‘made shipwreck of the faith’ and had ‘again turned back to the world by following the desire of the flesh’." [20]
The other Disciples’ churches survived. Enoch Holton was the elder at Upper Broad Creek. [21] The first person buried was the infant, Mary Eliza Holton, in 1845. [22] He was bondsman for the marriage of Carlos Holton’s grandparents. [23] The church was located in Olympia, west of Grantsville on the road between Alliance and New Bern.
The Bay Creek Church was located at Bethany Crossroads, now Arapahoe. The Disciples merged with Stone’s followers in 1832 to become the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). [24] However, the Campbellites maintained their identity for decades, but since have accepted the official name. What is now the Bethany Christian Church hosted the memorial service for Clifton McCotter’s sister in 2009. [25]
In 1852, the Disciples felt confident no Free Will Baptist churches survived, and that the few remaining Free Will Baptist "aberrations" in ritual "gradually disappeared" from the absorbed churches. [26]
Despite the power of the Disciples, some Free Will Baptist churches did persist in Pamlico County, North Carolina. The oldest identifiable burial [27] in the Goose Creek graveyard was Silas Miller, who died in 1850. [28] This was where Minnie Lee [29] and Ludie Parsons [30] were interred.
Free Will Baptists may have had a new appeal during the stresses of the Civil War. The oldest memorial in the Rock of Zion cemetery was for a Confederate soldier who died in 1862. [31] This Grantsville church provided the burial ground for two of Julian Boyd’s students, Frederick Liverman [32] and Duval Scott. [33] Other last names of his students found on tombstones were Banks, Bennett, Dixon, and Tingle.
All the other cemeteries in Pamlico County indexed by Find a Grave with antebellum dates were family plots, including Brinson-Bennett (1835), Alonzo Holton (1839), Cornelius Dixon (1842), and Rawls (1862). The first was in Grantsboro, the next two in Olympia, and the last in Arapahoe. [34]
End Notes
1. Johannes Kessler. Sabbata. Quoted by C. Arnold Snyder. "Margaret Hottinger of Zolliken." 43-53 in Profiles of Anabaptist Women. Edited by Snyder and Linda A. Huebert Hecht. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1996. 49. This appears to be an early reference to speaking in tongues. The fact she began dancing while naked contributed to her problems.
2. Schleitheim Confession. Quoted by Snyder. 50.
3. Snyder. 51.
4. Leigh Eric Schmidt. Holy Fairs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. 61.
5. Schmidt. 145–152.
6. Eleazar Wheelock. Letter to Daniel Rogers. 18 January 1742. Quoted by John Fea. "Wheelock’s World: Letters and the Communication of Revival in Great Awakening New England." American Antiquarian Society. Proceedings 109:99–144:1999. 128. "Under concern" meant individuals had made an initial commitment to Christ, but had not met all the requirements for acceptance set by the clergy for church membership.
7. Fea. 135.
8. John Lee. Letter to Eleazar Wheelock. East Lyme, Connecticut, 20 April 1741. Quoted by Fea. 111.
9. James Davenport. Letter to Eleazar Wheelock. Southold, New York, 5 October 1740. Quoted by Fea. 119–120.
10. Fea. 120. Davenport finally began burning books and one time cast his pants into the flames. It was after this that he recanted. [35]
11. Fea. 136.
12. Solomon Williams. Letter to Eleazar Wheelock. Lebanon, Connecticut, 1741. Quoted by Fea. 139.
13. Barton Warren Stone. The Biography of Eld. Barton Warren Stone. Cincinnati: American Christian Publication Society, 1853 edition. 34–35.
14. Alexander Campbell. "Re-immersion and Brother Thomas." The Millennial Harbinger 7:56–58:February 1836. 58.
15. Charles Crossfield Ware. North Carolina Disciples of Christ. Saint Louis: Christian Board of Publication, 1927. 265.
16. Ware. 267.
17. Ware. 269.
18. Ware. 266. I could find no local Utleys. He may have been a Free Will Baptist leader who went from church to church to counter the activities of the Disciples.
19. Ware. 267.
20. Ware. 267–268. No source was provided to date the observation.
21. Ware. 265.
22. J.D. Larimore. "Mary Eliza Holton." Find a Grave website. 23 May 2014.
23. J.D. Larimore. “Ada M. Holton Roberts.” Find a Grave website. 31 August 2015.
24. Wikipedia. "Thomas Campbell (Minister)."
25. Mildred McCotter Lee. Obituary. [New Bern] Journal Sun. 5 July 2009.
26. Ware. 85.
27. The problems with dating churches and cemeteries were discussed in the post for 19 January 2020.
28. Avilon Walston. "Silas Miller." Find a Grave website. 31 October 2013.
29. For more on Minnie Lee’s background, see the post for 8 December 2019.
30. John47. "Ludie Price Parsons." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011. Her relationship to Minnie Lee was discussed in the post for 8 December 2019.
31. Bernd Doss. "Corp David L. Banks." Find a Grave website. 9 September 2010.
32. Bernd Doss. "Benjamin Frederick Liverman." Find a Grave website. 4 September 2010.
33. Bernd Doss. "W. Duval Scott." Find a Grave website. 6 September 2010.
34. Amity Christian Church in Grantsboro has a marker for an infant who died in 1832, [36] before the Disciples had much influence. There are graves through the 1920s for a few families that suggest it was then a family plot, which later was next to land provided to the church. As mentioned in the post for 6 February 2019, this was what happened in Alliance where the original McCotter cemetery was located next to the more recent United Methodist Church and became associated with it.
35. Wikipedia. "James Davenport (Clergyman)."
36. John47. "Baby Barrington." Find a Grave website. 25 June 2011.
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