CHAPTER XLIII
The Palestine Association
[p. 144]
The first Baptist church organized to the eastern side of the state was the Lamotte church, Crawford county, in 1812. It was united with the Wabash Association, over the river in Indiana, which was organized three years before. The oldest: church in that Association was Maria Creek church, a few miles from the river in Indiana, organized in 1809. Three of the constituent members, Samuel Allison and wife and John Morris, a colored man, lived in Illinois. In the fall of 1809 Isaac McCoy became their pastor, and so continued until he went as a missionary to the Indians. On the Illinois side of the river, in 1817, Little Village church, Lawrence county, was organized and joined the Wabash Association. The same year, 1817, Daniel Parker arrived on the scene from Kentucky, and became pastor of the two Illinois churches. Then the excitement began. Up to that time the churches were in full sympathy with the foreign mission movement that had recently commenced with the change of views of Adoniram Judson and the traveling agency of Luther Rice. The very year that Parker arrived the Wabash Association put on record that: "This Association has received with much pleasure the circular of the board of foreign missions, and is highly pleased with the infomation derived therefrom."Two years afterward, under Parker's lead and in the absence of McCoy, the attitude of the Association was changed. It was done reluctantly and under stress, for in 1820 the Association said: "We hope no use will be made of the decision of last year relative to the subject of missions, to the distress of Zion."Yet by Parker's fierce driving that was the use made of it, and by the very preachers whose better judgment protested against such use! In 1820 he published a pamphlet, in which he made such wrong statements of fact that Maria Creek church laid charges against him before the Lamotte church for fraud and falsehood. That opened a controversy which resulted in 1824 in dividing the Association. Seven of the twelve churches withdrew and organized as the Union Association, leaving only the two churches in Illinois and three in Indiana to the antimission Wabash.
[p. 145]
The great point made by Parker was that mission Boards are outside agencies, not answerable to the churches. To church or associational missions he professed at that time to have no objections. So perhaps if the brethren who met in Dr. Baldwin's parlor in Boston on that chilly February day in 1813, had organized a society not to support missions but to stir up the churches to support missions, the missionary history of the last century might have been different. When we are at the sources of things we have tremendous responsibilities.
But there were other causes besides that of missionary policy. There was Parker's jealousy of the influence of McCoy. And there was a mistaken view of the doctrine of predestination. This came to be so held as to shut out christian activity altogether. The Spoon River Association in 1869 charged Baptists with preaching a "conditional salvation predicated upon human means." But Baptists never taught such a salvation. They teach that God works through his people. They hear his voice saying, "Let us go forth into the field." He who believes that the shield of faith has only one side invariably gets tangled up in the threads of his own logic. A writer said in a religious newspaper article: "Either the sinner is saved by grace or he is not saved by grace but uses his own power to help God save him; the two will not go together." But they do go together. They did in the miracles of Jesus; they do in the miracles of the Spirit.
Another misunderstanding of scripture is that "atonement is the same as forgiveness." It then follows that as the elect are already forgiven there is no need of preaching divine forgiveness at all. In this view to preach forgiveness is to doubt the atonement. But the one illustration of the slain lamb in Egypt should have been enough to have rectified that error. The death of the lamb signified atonement, but there was no deliverance until the blood was sprinkled on the door post.
In 1826 Lamotte church which had stood by Parker's antimissionism, divided over his foolish Two Seed doctrine; then there were two Lamotte churches. The second Lamotte having broken away swung back to their old moorings, putting as great a distance between themselves and Parker as they could. They made it a cause of exclusion when one of their number joined the "Parkerites." It was plain that they had escaped from a despotism. In 1837 Elder Stephen Kennedy became the pastor of Second Lamotte church, and so continued for fourteen years. For three years, '41-'43, he was aided by the Home Mission Society as an itinerant preacher. He labored all through that
[p. 146]
region, and as the result several churches were organized. They were known as "Effort" Baptists, or Baptists who believed in doing something.
October 15, 1841, delegates from six churches met with the Second Lamotte church and organized the Palestine Association. The name was taken from the village on the eastern edge of Lamotte prairie, which was then the county seat of Crawford county. The Association had grown to twenty-two churches, embracing all the Baptist churches in Crawford county and as many more outside. Stephen Kennedy was on the eastern side of the state what James Lemen was on the western. And the Palestine Association in the one case, as truly as the Friends to Humanity in the other, was a protest against an evil environment. A similar spirit to which organized Cantine Creek church in St. Clair church in Crawford county organized Second Lamotte church in Crawford county. In both cases the separation was thorough and final.
Neither of the Laotte churches are now in existence. At the last meetmg of Second Lamotte in 1859 so many members had removed that the church voted to disband. Elder D. Y. Allison was pastor at the time. He had been with the church since 1838. Himself and wife united by experience, having withdrawn from Little Village church on account of its "Parkerism." The same year he was elected deacon, and was soon after ordained to the ministry. In place of Lamotte, Liberty church was soon organized, almost on the same spot, and it still alive and active. ================= [Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 144-146. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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