Notes Concerning Author.
The author, James A. Rogers, is primarily concerned with drawing a picture of the man and his historical impact on Baptist mission, Southern Baptist organization and Baptist education.
Originally published in 1985, this 335-page book is the first biography since 1913 devoted to the life of the pioneer Southern Baptist pastor and statesman, Richard Furman. The 1913 biography was written by Harvey T. Cook and was published by Baptist Courier Job Rooms. Of the two, the Society recommends the work by Rogers, which is a worthy addition to the growing body of literature on Baptist history and theology.
Abstract
Furman (1755-1825) was born into a Puritan family in New York shortly before their move to South Carolina in 1756. Converted under Baptist preaching in the early 1770’s, Furman rejected his father’s Anglicanism for Baptist views and was ordained within a few years of his baptism. By the way, during the Revolution, Furman had a price set on his head by the British General Cornwallis, who feared the prayers of Furman more than the combined might of two continental armies.
Furman was an advocate of a pan-Protestant religious liberty, yet defended his own right as an ordained minister to be a political representative at the state level and argued for state funding of his religious school. In church government, he moved his congregation away from an aristocratic to a more democratic model. For a time he was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina.
A prominent leader in the Charleston Association, the first and leading Baptist association in the South, he believed revival would come to the churches as a result of ministerial education, lay indoctrination, attention to ecclesiology and pious commitment. During the Second Great Awakening, he lauded the movement’s “great tendency to excite the attention, and engage it to religion,” but warned about “some incidental evils,” especially the loss of rational activity. Furman was not only a dedicated pastor, but also the first true denominational statesman among Baptists in the United States. In 1813, he was elected the first President of the Triennial Convention, the first national Baptist missions society in America.
Soon after his 1817 address to that same convention on the need for ministerial education, Baptists established at least ten now-prominent Baptist colleges and universities. He was invited to preach before the President and Congress of the United States in 1814. Unlike some denominational leaders then and today, Furman understood that Baptists must have a vote on those institutional decisions which affect the churches. Furman University, the South’s first Baptist college, was founded in 1826 and named in his honor.
Furman established a unique form of ecclesiastical structure with the constitution of the South Carolina Baptist Convention — a form that would empower the later Southern Baptist Convention to become the greatest missionary and educational denomination in the United States.
The Society appreciates the input use here, obtained from baptisttheology.org.
Availability of this Book.
New and used copies of Richard Furman: Life and Legacy are available at inexpensive prices. We suggest Amazon.com.
HRW