A Review, 2023 THE FIRST FIFTY BAPTIST CHURCHES IN KENTUCKY
By Micky Winter, Waynesburg, KY. 2016.The critical writer Ambrose Bierce, under a pseudonym, once wrote:
There is not much mud to fling here; so, hopefully it won't come the other way. This book is interesting reading, and to have so much information on early Baptists collected into one place is so helpful. The book is well laid out, and includes pictures, where these are available, after more than 200 years.There is a land of pure delight,
Beyond the Jordan's flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
Fling back the critic's mud.
"Orrin Goof"John Filson wrote in his Kentucke, 1784: that "the Anabaptists were the first" to hold any public worship in Kentucky. This fact, generally ignored in our major histories, is of extreme importance in understanding the subsequent history of the Commonwealth, and the character of its people. When Filson published his work there were already at least nine Baptist churches in Kentucky. Ten more were established the next year.
Winter's book should be on the shelves of every Baptist preacher in the state. It should also be in any public library that has a collection of Kentucky or pioneer genealogy. Many of the churches in the West came directly from Kentucky, and if not, they are only a generation or two removed. John Tanner, who is discussed at some length in the book, was said with good reason, to have started the first church of any kind in the new territory west of the Mississippi. It is significant that it was a Baptist church. Most of the early Baptists in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and further West, came from Kentucky. Baptists there should all have an interest in the material in this book.
This book is not just about the churches. It includes biographical sketches of many of the early preachers. It would be helpful to have a name index, as these biographies are scattered through the book, included with the churches which they served. If you know these people very well (historically speaking), there will be information about them that may not appear here. There is a wonderful story about Ambrose Dudley, pastor of Bryan Station (church no. 21), of which I have been a member. Someone coming into Lexington asked a passerby where he could find Ambrose Dudley. The answer was: "Just walk through town, and when you see the proudest looking, best-dressed man in town, that will be him." I cannot recall where I read that. It seems like it was Ranck's Lexington, but a search of the book does not turn it up. Such anecdotes often tell us more about a person than a full biography.
For most of the people who appear here you will have to write the biography yourself; which I suggest is worth doing. This book is a good place to start if you want to know more about our Baptist past, in which Kentucky is especially rich. What you read in this book can be a guide to further reading on your own; and you will find these people and the churches with which they are associated very interesting. It seems many of these preachers, and perhaps the laymen as well, subscribed to the Baptist principle of "everyman his own theologian", which made for most interesting controversies among them at times. If I have one major criticism of the book it is that there is no title page. The cover of a book does not serve as a title page. I am not trying to fling mud; as a librarian and archivist, only a really good book can redeem this defect in my eyes, and this book does so! My only question is when do we get to see the title page of volume 2 — the next fifty churches? Even a list of all the Baptist churches and their dates and the order in which they were established up to at least 1850 or 1860 would be valuable; perhaps this could be included as an appendix to the second volume.
Written by James K. Duvall, M. A., the author of: An Island Called Boone County, Kentucky, 2022. Mary Ingles and the Escape from Big Bone Lick. 2000. and God's Chosen People, 2020. etc., and director of the "Annals of Kentucky," a project to make primary historical documents and indexes available for the entire Commonwealth. He lives at Big Bone, Kentucky.
Nec ossa solvm sed etiam sangvenem.
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