North Carolina Baptists celebrate 175-year heritage

By David Wilkinson

BSC Communications

WINSTON-SALEM - North Carolina Baptists kicked off a three-day 175th birthday party Nov. 14 by revisiting the pivotal events that gave birth to their state convention in 1830.

An original drama, penned by Raleigh screenwriter David Creech with research assistance from North Carolina historians Hugh Wease and Hargus Taylor, formed the heart of the convention's opening session at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem.

History came alive as actors portrayed the 14 founding fathers - seven Baptist elders and seven laymen - who met in the village of Greenville on March 26, 1830, to worship and pray and to discuss formation of a state convention.

The drama cast a spotlight in particular on two "northern preachers," Samuel Wait of New York and Thomas Meredith of Pennsylvania, who with their families made significant personal and professional sacrifices to respond to God's call to invest their lives in preaching, teaching and evangelizing in North Carolina.

The founding group gathered at Greenville Academy, a small, private charter school where one of the 14, George Stokes, served as principal. The building also hosted worship services of the Greenville Baptist congregation, which, like most Baptist churches in the area, was too poor to buy land or construct buildings.

A series of circumstances, which the leaders clearly attributed to divine guidance, had brought the men together and fueled a shared vision for a state convention. One of those incidents was a horse-and-buggy accident near New Bern that turned Samuel Wait's planned stopover into a three-year stay. Wait had left his beloved New York to accompany his friend and mentor William Staughton of Columbian College on a fundraising trip to South Carolina and Georgia. But the accident left Staughton injured, and as Wait stayed with him he was invited to preach and then to stay as pastor of the Baptist church there, a stint that stretched into three years.

In 1830, Wait, Meredith and others envisioned a statewide entity that would unify the state's fledgling congregations, generate support for mission efforts across the state and also address the critical need for educated ministers. In 1830 only five college-trained preachers occupied North Carolina Baptist pulpits. Wait, as the drama noted, was already voicing the idea of a Baptist college "for the purpose of educating young men for the clergy and learning viable trades," a dream that became reality four years later with the founding of Wake Forest University as the first of seven colleges to be affiliated with the convention.

During the drama, Meredith stood before the group to read the new constitution into the record, including an article stating the convention's purpose: "The primary objects of this Convention shall be the education of young men called of God to the Ministry, and approved by the Churches to which they respectively belong; the employment of Missionaries within the limits of this State; and a cooperation with the Baptist General Convention of the United States, in the promotion of Missions in general."

Meredith also authored an influential "Circular Letter" urging the creation of Baptist colleges and articulating a vision for a state Baptist publication. Three years later he published the first issue of The Baptist Interpreter, which later became the Biblical Recorder.