The Baptist Church in the Lower Mississippi Valley 1776-1845, by Walter Brownlow Posey. University of Kentucky Press: University of Kentucky, 1957. Pp. 166, Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 57-11382

            The American South is, in many ways, defined by the Baptist Church. And yet, the South itself has also shaped the growth of the Church, directing its course and encouraging its doctrine. The entwining of these two concepts, Baptist and South, is a perfect marriage, enabled by the properties of the Church and the nature of Southern development. Those elements are explored in Walter Brownlow Posey's The Baptist Church in the Lower Mississippi Valley 1776-1845.9

            Posey offers an overview of the Baptist Church as it took root in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. It is primarily a profile, detailing the growth of the Church, its movement with the expanding frontier, and the character of its adherents and ministers. The image presented is of a Church that was inherently independent, democratic, and in some ways rough or uneducated, less by choice and more by circumstance. Aspects of the Baptist Church at this time made it ideal for frontier worship, and further allowed its expansion and adoption by Southern society. Those same aspects, however, hindered its ability to establish more structured norms as those seen by rival Methodist and Presbyterian Churches.

            Many of the sources are drawn from the upper portion of the South, a note that Posey himself laments in his introduction. Despite his attempt to cover a wider range of Southern Baptist communities, he notes that the wealth of materials came from Kentucky and Tennessee, as these were the most densely settled areas within his span of coverage. Those sources are largely drawn from church records, early church histories, and secondary accounts not too removed from the time covered.

            In spite of the skewed records, Posey's work presents a good picture of the early Baptist Church as it was in the American South. What is seen is a church in flux, that grappled with its growth and its doctrine. In spite of the fact that it lacked the educated ministry of the Presbyterians and Methodists, possessed a woefully underpaid and underappreciated clergy, and initially addressed such issues as missions and slavery with great debate, the Baptist Church thrived. Its growth is detailed through each chapter, as well as the Church coming to terms with individual concepts of doctrine, especially in slavery and missions work.

            Posey organizes his material in a well-plotted manner, arranging each chapter by a centralized theme or topic. The reader finds each topic locks together to explain not only the overall success of the Baptist Church in the South, but also the events that made it a uniquely Southern church. Posey makes a strong attempt to cover the broad reach of Baptist theology in all aspects of Southern and frontier life, and largely succeeds. The one weakness is the very thing Posey points out: his primary sources are quite limited. Thus, while he strives to present as wide reaching a view as possible, he is hindered by the limitation of first-hand accounts to more established areas. Given the wide range of coverage he does provide, however, it is a small quibble.

John McCarron