“Oh That All Bigotry Was Rooted Out Of The Earth!” The Evangelical Catholicity Of Oliver Hart And The Regular Baptists -- By: Eric C. Smith

Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 07:1 (Summer 2016)
Article: “Oh That All Bigotry Was Rooted Out Of The Earth!” The Evangelical Catholicity Of Oliver Hart And The Regular Baptists
Author: Eric C. Smith


“Oh That All Bigotry Was Rooted Out Of The Earth!”
The Evangelical Catholicity Of Oliver Hart And The Regular Baptists

Eric C. Smith

Sharon Baptist Church, Savannah, TN

This article argues that Regular Baptist leader Oliver Hart (1723–95) embraced the “evangelical catholicity” of the Great Awakening. Following revival leaders like George Whitefield, Hart’s emphasis on evangelical piety (especially the new birth, gospel holiness, and the desire for sinners to be converted by the Holy Spirit) allowed him to partner with Christians across the denominational spectrum to advance revival. Hart’s friendships with evangelical Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans are all explored, while his continued commitment to Baptist church order is also noted. Hart’s catholicity is significant for understanding the Regular Baptist movement, indicating that the Regular Baptists shared in the revival spirituality of the Great Awakening to a far greater degree than has traditionally been acknowledged.

On October 27, 1754, Richard Clarke (1723–1802), rector of St. Philip’s Anglican Church in Charleston, South Carolina, took ill. Scheduled to perform a funeral that afternoon, Clarke relayed a message to Oliver Hart (1723–95), pastor of the Charleston Baptist Church. In an apparently unprecedented move, Clarke asked the Regular Baptist minister to conduct the service for him, in his “own way.” Though worlds apart ecclesiologically, Clarke recognized in Hart a fellow evangelical, and trusted him to preach Christ to his people. Hart later reflected,

In the evening I buried a child in the church burying ground, and spoke extempore, perhaps the first instance of this nature ever known in this province. The church minister was sick and could not attend himself; therefore, gave me free liberty to speak in my own way; which discovered an extraordinary catholick spirit. Oh that all bigotry was rooted out of the earth; then would there subsist a greater harmony between persons, than what does; it is indeed a pity that our little outward differences should cause such a shyness between us.1

The incident captures the spirit of evangelical “catholicity” which swept the north Atlantic Protestant world during the Great Awakening.2 The experience of new birth, the hunger for gospel holiness, and the desire to see many converted to faith in Jesus Christ by the Spirit’s power united Christians who differed over issues of church order. Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins have recently observed that Hart, along with most Regular Baptists, adopted the revival’s c...

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