Southern Baptist churches within the state will soon receive copies of Mississippi Baptists: A History of Southern Baptists in the Magnolia State, the first history of Mississippi baptists to be written in more than 50 years. Commissioned by the Mississippi Baptist Historical Commission in conjunction with the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, the book was written by Hattiesburg resident, Robert “Bob” Rogers, Th. D.
Rogers earned his Th. D. in church history at New Orleans Seminary, retired as a chaplain at Forrest General Hospital and teaches history online for Baptist University of Florida. Outside of Southern Baptist churches, the book is available online at https://mc.libguides.com/mbhc/historybook for a suggested donation of $15.
Q: What first inspired you to take on the monumental task of writing a full history of Mississippi Baptists?
A: Ever since I did my doctoral dissertation on a social history of Baptists in antebellum Natchez when I found some errors in R.A. McLemore's history of Mississippi Baptists that was written in 1971, I have been interested in this project. Now it has been over 50 year since anybody wrote a history of Mississippi Baptists. The civil rights movement, controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention, and many changes in the culture happened since the previous book.
Q: Was there a particular moment or discovery in your research that convinced you this story needed to be told?
A: Yes, I discovered the mother church of Mississippi Baptists was Ebenezer Baptist in Florence, South Carolina. We knew the first Baptists came to Mississippi from South Carolina to flee the violence of the American Revolution, but McLemore only guessed where in South Carolina they were from. I was able to connect the dots through church minutes and associational records to Ebenezer, which explains why one of the first churches they started in Amite County, Mississippi was also named Ebenezer.
Q: Did you include any forgotten or overlooked stories that you felt especially compelled to include?
A: Yes! Many people have no idea that the first Baptist pastor was persecuted for his faith and had to fight for religious freedom. Many people are unaware that in the 1890s there was a huge battle over whether to relocate Mississippi College, the Baptist school in Clinton, to Meridian. Also, there was a big controversy in 1948-49 over the handling of funds by D.A. "Scotchie" McCall, the executive director of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, that nearly split the Mississippi Baptist Convention. The records of what happened were sealed until 2005, so my book is the first to publicly detail the McCall Controversy.
Q: Were there any recurring themes- such as resilience, division or revival- that you found consistently throughout the history?
A: A history written about Mississippi cannot avoid the ugly story of slavery and racial oppression. I sought to deal honestly but redemptively, balancing the negative story of racial sin with the positive story of repentance and racial reconciliation. There were also many controversies which shaped Baptists, over such issues as Landmarkism, Calvinism, and liberal vs. conservative theology.
Q: What do you think makes Mississippi Baptists distinct compared to other Southern states?
A: Mississippi has the highest concentration of Baptists than any other state in the union. As such, we have produced a disproportionate number of leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, including many leaders of mission boards, seminaries, and other agencies. My book dedicates space in each chapter to tell of Mississippians who were leaders on the larger national stage, like Owen Cooper of Yazoo City, the last layperson to be president of the SBC, or Charles Pickering of Laurel, who helped organize the Peace Committee during the SBC controversy of the 1980s.
Q: Looking at the present day, what lessons from Baptist history in Mississippi remain relevant today?
A: Mississippi Baptists learned to hold their leaders more accountable after the McCall Controversy in the 1940s, and learned to be more open to all races after the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Unfortunately, some of those lessons of history have been forgotten, and we can be in danger of repeating them again. For example, there were controversies in the 1990s over presidents of William Carey University and Mississippi College who needed to be held more accountable.
Q: What do you hope that readers- whether Baptist or not- take away from this book?
A: I think all readers can appreciate the struggle for religious freedom that the first Mississippi Baptists had, as the Spanish who controlled the Natchez District arrested the first Baptist pastor in1795 because he was not Roman Catholic. Also, readers can appreciate the dedication of so many Christians long ago who had built meeting houses out of logs in the forest and rode horseback for miles to preach to small congregations. Chapter six of my book describes typical church life in the antebellum era: their preaching, music, architecture, and even one church that had boxes for tobacco spitting!
Q: If you had to sum up Mississippi Baptists in a single phrase or theme, what would that be?
A: Mississippi Baptists are a flawed but faithful group of Christians who have grown through controversy.
