Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776-1860

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Description

Between 1776 and the mid-1800s, the number of Baptists in america grew at a staggering
rate, rising from fifty thousand at the outbreak of revolution to more than one million as the nation
edged toward civil war. As the Second Great Awakening swept through the Old Southwest, it generated
religious enthusiasm among Methodist and Baptist converts who were intent upon replacing
old forms of Protestantism with an evangelical vibrancy that reflected and steadily contributed
to the unsettled social relations of the new republic. No place used to be better suited to embrace this
enthusiasm than Kentucky. In Born of Water and Spirit, Richard C. Traylor explores the successes
and failures of Baptists in this area, the use of it as a window into the elements of Baptist life
that transcended locale.

Traylor argues that the achievements of Baptists in Kentucky reflect, in many ways, their success
and coming of age in the early national period of The usa. The factionalism that characterized
frontier Baptists, he asserts, is an essential key to understanding who the colonial Baptists had
been, who they were becoming in the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, and
who they would transform after the Civil War.

In this highly nuanced study, Traylor looks at the denomination in light of what he calls its
“Baptist impulse”—the movement’s fluid structure and democratic spirit. These characteristics
have proven to be its greatest strength in addition to the source of its most terrible struggles. Yet, confronting
theological clashes, at the side of the challenges that include growth, forged the Baptist
identity and shaped its future.

The first three chapters examine the primary elements of the impulse: rituals of conversion,
baptism, and communion; the Baptist preacher; and the significance of the local church to the
sect. Following these chapters are explorations of the reformations and forces of change in the
early to mid-1800s, the role of women and African Americans in developing the group, and the
refinement and reorientation of priorities from 1840 to 1860. This important denominational history
will be of great value to scholars of American religious history and the history of the early
American republic.
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