Primitive Baptists are a little-known strict Calvinistic group that arose out of a schism with other Baptists in the South who adopted a pro-revival, pro-missionary identity in the 1830s. Some renderings of the story see it (1) as a theological conflict over strict Calvinists/Primitives opposing the Arminianizing of Calvinism via the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening, (2) as a conflict between the frontier “anti-missions” Primitive stance versus the eastern pro-missionary development of extra-biblical mission boards, and (3) as an expression of the frontier spirit, or Jacksonian democracy, localism, populism embodied in the Primitives, over against the growing centralized trends of more urbanized elites, or eastern Baptist denominationalism. Guthman does not contend that these interpretations are misguided, but that they are deficient and miss the central thrust of Primitive Baptist identity. Using the newer insights of the history of emotion, Guthman writes a series of essays (not a chronological full history) and creatively contends that Primitive Baptists were “emotional exiles” (54). They felt despair keenly, and tried but failed to conform to the emerging Southern evangelical Protestantism's emotional habits of a more hopeful, new-birth, revivalism. Their emotional “experience of persistent doubt” set them apart from the developing evangelical movement.
Guthman's reading of denominational histories as “imaginative documents” (17) no doubt includes some speculation. His focus on understanding Baptists in terms of lived experience, however, provides a fascinating way to supplement other readings of Primitive Baptist identity in particular, and larger evangelical and Baptist studies in general. Church History journal readers know the name of historian Edwin Gaustad (an American Baptist) who viewed experience as key to understanding Baptist identity. Tensions and contradictions aside, the cup of Baptist literature overflows with the language of experience, in addition to its insistence on the sole authority of the Bible for faith and practice. The focus on personal faith, the focus on individual conscience, while being part of the church, is never missing in the literature of this era (nor any era in Baptist history). Baptists were sometimes worried by experience, but they were inescapably drawn to it, nonetheless. The social and theological explanations of Primitive Baptist identity/origins numerically listed above will most likely still be given priority by analysts, but Guthman's experiential angle will no doubt fascinate. His insistence on the power of despair as a common identity among Primitive Baptists should find a place at the explanatory table.
Readers of Baptist studies or readers attuned to how history of interpretation can shed light on how we describe the past will benefit greatly from Guthman's treatment of nineteenth-century Baptist historiography regarding the origins of the Primitive Baptists and their split from the missionary Baptists who eventually dominated the Baptist and evangelical landscape. Primitive Baptists self-identified as restorationists (or as the New Testament church) and opposed the pro-missionary Baptists as an emerging Baptist bureaucracy that idolized non-biblical institutions. Man-made mechanical revivalism characterized the darkness of the age. On the other hand, pro-missionary Baptists affirmed an optimistic, pro-revival, pro-institution-building future that frowned on the pessimistic, anti-progress, starchy Calvinism of the Primitives. While Guthman could have cited the writings of Francis Wayland of Brown University—who ironically had strong anti-centralization tendencies—his use of Baptist historiography is convincing when he concludes, “stereotype itself became the schism's most enduring legacy” (42).
One question of exegesis involves Guthman's reference to Primitive Baptists regarding themselves as “worms” (58). Certainly they did as part of their Calvinist identity, and Guthman notes that the worm phrasing has biblical precedent in the Psalms. But most, if not all Christians who sang hymns of Isaac Watts were ingrained with a wormish identity (“At the Cross” [1707]: “Alas! And did my Savior bleed, And did my sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”). Perhaps Primitive Baptists, in their strict Calvinism, were the most guilt-ridden worms (while speculative, an intriguing assessment of Guthman's), but totally depraved understandings of the conversion process had deep roots in Baptist and larger Calvinistic-evangelical, influenced experience.
The essay on black Primitive Baptists is a wonderful addition to late nineteenth-century studies, especially black Baptist studies. Former slaves who identified as strict Calvinists, who affirmed predestination, certainly seem counter-intuitive, but Guthman emphasizes that black Primitive Baptists were part of a new kind of American Calvinism that “moved numbly between black Calvinist sectarianism and optimistic ecumenicism” (107) (no doubt the optimism of these black Baptists did not match the despair of white Primitives described in the text). How much did these black Baptists continue to identify as Primitives because that was the Americanized religion they were raised in as slaves, as Guthman contends? Was the emotional appeal of their brand of Calvinism enough to sustain and uniquely energize? Some readers will apply this question to the overall thesis of the book about Primitive Baptists generally, given they (rightly) identified their Calvinism with their understanding of the Baptist story and heritage.
Readers with an interest in musical history/analysis will certainly like Guthman's coverage of the African-American “rock Daniel” (111–115) and the concluding chapter on the understanding of the bluegrass music of Primitive Baptists, an extension of the book's focus on emotional analysis. Roscoe Holcomb (not explicitly a Primitive Baptist, but a part of the culture) and Grammy-award winner Ralph Stanley (“O Death”) speak to the “lonesome sound” of the Primitive Baptist emotional understanding of life. The fascinating, sympathetic treatment of these musicians reveals the draw that Guthman, a professor at Berea College in Kentucky, a school known for its positive work in the Appalachian region, has for his subject matter, Primitive Baptists, a group he wants others to better understand and better appreciate. He succeeded in that task.
