What reasons account for the growth of the Southern Baptist churches and the decline in Northern Baptist

churches in the years following the split? Comment on which reason(s) seems most significant. After the schism of 1845, Southern Baptists began to flourish while Northern Baptists declined for several reasons. First was the difference in demographics and their spiritual needs. In the South, the Civil War resulted in approximately four million slaves being freed with both physical and spiritual needs. The needs were exacerbated by the political turmoil, economic devastation, sharecropping, and poor health. The pain and suffering within the South made people very accepting of the Gospel with many of the blacks that came to Christ often became Baptists.[1] Unlike the North, Scotch-Irish immigration provided an influx of people that were open to the Baptist faith. In the North, Baptists faced European immigration, rise in organized labor, and the development of the industrial economy.[2] Consequently, methods of evangelism were different as was the theological emphasis. The Northern Baptists decline could likely be attributed for overextending its work in other places besides the North. For example, the Northern Baptists HMS did not allow the controversy to derail their mission to the cultivation of the entire continent.[3] In 1863, HMS sent one-third of all its mission force to the South which they identified as everything south of New York.[4] The work was so overwhelming that HMS established the Freedmens Fund to sponsor evangelistic and educational efforts to the South. HMS helped established black churches and trained black ministers and deacons through the Freedmens Institute.[5] Furthermore, in education HMS also established several black colleges in the South. While Northern Baptists were doing a great work in the South, they struggled with the demands of the massive immigrant population (approximately 20 million) in the North. Most of the immigrants came from nonevangelical backgrounds and proved resistant to Christian conversion and assimilation into the American church.[6] The HMS feared that unless the new immigrants were converted and assimilated that the belief system of America could be radically changed.[7] Admirably, HMS tried to reach the immigrants by sponsoring over twenty-one different nationality groups while constantly searching for the indigenous workers to appoint as missionaries. Seminaries accommodated as well by offering language departments that could teach qualified missionaries. An internal aspect the affected the success of Northern Baptists was localism. The spirit of autonomy through the societal form of church leadership that characterized the North led to several local independent societies. These small societies often chose their own home missionaries which created overlap, duplication, and no end of confusion as missionaries on the same fields jockeyed for position.[8] Although the South experienced their own controversy with localism in Landmarkism, the Southern Baptist Convention was able to galvanize the churches to resist its influence while persuading the South to closely examine its beliefs and organizational structure. Since both Northern and Southern Baptists hold the same fundamental faith and practice, the decline of the North most likely can be attributed to the manner in which the North handled the spiritual needs of their region. In Acts 1: 8, Jesus gave the formula for evangelism: local,

region, then worldwide. Instead of focusing all of their efforts in their region, Northern Baptists spent valuable resources in the South, established schools in various places in the South and West, while allowing localism to disrupt unity and focus within their own denomination.

[1]Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage. (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press), 392. [2]Ibid. [3]Ibid., 404. McBeth cited Robert Bakers work Relations Between Northern and Southern Baptists, 2nd ed.. [4]Ibid. [5]Ibid. [6]Ibid., 406. [7]Ibid. [8]Ibid., 410.