In Baptists Through the Centuries: A History of a Global People, David Bebbington argues that “the existence of a parallel schism in England” confirms “that theological issues were central” within American Baptist antimissionism and identifies theological conviction as the “mainspring” of this opposition to missions. However, while theological concerns must never be discounted, populism and primitivism, not predestination, predominantly motivated the earliest manifestations of Baptist antimissionism in America. In fact, many of the earliest and most outspoken American Baptist dissenters—men like John Leland, John Taylor, and Alexander Campbell—rejected the high Calvinist theological convictions that motivated Strict and Particular Baptist antimissionism in England. Primitive Baptists in America eventually directed similar high Calvinist theological arguments against missionary efforts, but populist concerns never went away.
In the 1830s antimissionary Baptists on both sides of the Atlantic began publishing magazines to disseminate their views. In 1833, Gilbert Beebe founded the Signs of the Times from his base in New Vernon, New York. Two years later, Joshua Lawrence and Mark Bennett launched The Primitive Baptist out of Tarborough, North Carolina. Meanwhile, in England, two distinct groups of high Calvinist Strict Baptists began publishing their own monthlies, The Gospel Herald (1833) and The Gospel Standard (1835). These four magazines, two on each side of the Atlantic, provide hints toward understanding what motivated antimission sentiment in two culturally diverse locations. Relying primarily on these magazines, this paper will argue that, while many Primitive Baptists in America shared the high Calvinist theological outlook of their antimission peers in England, the American political and cultural context provided a different set of concerns. Due to deeply imbedded cultural animosities, populism continued to motivate Primitive Baptist antimissionism.