“Intercommunion is perceptibly influencing our churches to surrender their independency itself, in order to protect their Communion tables. This is a portentous evil which is seriously threatening a speedy change in the polity of Baptist churches. During and from the apostolic period, potent influences, both from within and without, have been antagonizing and seeking to contravene the fundamental principle of absolute church independency. Ministers, ambitious of power and authority, have, from the beginning, antagonized it from within, and will to the end of time. The influence of powerful centralized religious organizations from that without operate upon our leaders to desire similar power; as the kingly forms of government, of the nations, did upon God’s people of old, causing them to desire a king to lead them forth to battle.
Able advocates are now using the pulpit, press, and pen in the plausible advocacy of a “modified independency,” which they denominate the Interdependency of the churches, which means that the churches must consent not only to be bound by the acts of ministerial councils and associations, thus making them virtually appellate Courts, but also consent that the disciplinary decisions of one church, however unscriptural or unrighteous shall bind every other church. We are startled almost weekly of late at hearing southern editors and writers deprecating absolute church independency, and indorsing the specious pleas for interdependency, which, to the knowing ones, means nothing less than the total abrogation of local church independency, and the substitution of a centralized form of government, which floats in their conceptions as “the denomination,” controlled by conventions, associations, and councils, the last analysis of which is hierarchism.”
Had such a writer lived today, he would be kicked out of most Landmark Baptist fellowships. He would not be invited to many Bible Conferences. He would be shunned, slandered, and talked about behind his back. Many pastors and preachers would write articles against him and preach sermons to combat him.
Yet, the writer continues in his book:
“We are given to understand that these pleas for interdependence and unification mean nothing less than the utter subversion and abrogation of true church independency, and the substitution of a centralized denominationalism in its place, which is but another word for hierarchism—for the clergy invariably govern and control all centralized forms of ecclesiasticism. Now no more influential argument can be brought to bear upon the churches, one they can see and feel, than that by adopting the theory of church interdependency they can effectually guard their communion tables from the approach of their own excluded members! Thus to support a manifestly unscriptural practice the divine constitution of the churches of Christ is coolly proposed to be abrogated! The sad fact is, that in many and large section of our country, especially in the northern states, this interdependency is already so generally and so practically accepted by the churches that, Baptists excluded from one church, however unscripturally and unrighteously, no other church will restore him to his church rights until the excluding church restores and commends him, thus indorsing the theory that the acts of one church binds every other church. Who will deny that a practice, the support of which demands not only the violation of the appointments of Christ but the abrogation of the divine constitution of his churches, is not a fearful evil?”
Who is this author? Who would write such a thing?
His name is J.R. Graves. The book is Intercommunion, Unscriptural, and Inconsistent.
It’s worth it’s weight in gold. The fact that he would not be welcome in a Landmark Baptist Church today with such a view is telling. Landmarkism in many circles is not what it used to be. In many ways it has become much like a cult. Think it’s harsh? Read after Graves, Pendleton, Dayton. Compare their tone with other Baptists and then look at the tone of the modern Landmarkers today. They were trying to help Baptists to remember what it is to be a Baptist. Too many today are using Landmarkism like a club to beat people over the head, to try to tell them they are the only “true Baptists” and if you disagree (even a little) you aren’t a “real Baptist.”