Democratic Religion Chapter Summaries

Democratic Religion is about how the Baptist Denomination committed to having a democratic religion amidst a sea of liberal protestant religions in the United States. The thesis of the book is “how one denomination fashioned a form of piety [and] committed to religious freedom and to democratic authority” from 1785 to 1900. Wills, from the outset of this book, purposes this work as a historical narrative that lets “the Baptists speak for themselves” even though many throughout the ages have tried to twists the words of the denomination for personal gain. Wills is trying to show how the protestant faith evolved from 1785-1900, and through that time how church discipline and ecclesiology evolved in this time period. The majority of “churches

One of the egregious sins in Baptist life is dancing, and “the church cried out against dancing and fiddling” even when serious offenses permeated the congregation. Wills describes how trials involving discipline often included the entire congregation, and many church in this time used the Matthew 18 model to either reconcile or excommunicate them. Wills argues that people needed to be in high standing to receive membership into the church, while it only took a majority decision to excommunicate a member. This strict discipline and hard guarding of the front and back doors of the church, as Wills describes, is “for the glory of god & good of the cause of religion.” The Baptist church considered purity and discipline a vital part of the success of God’s church, as Wills postulates that “the only Christian freedom worth contending for was one build on the purity secured by discipline.” Purity allowed for the church to operate in the will of God, while discipline allowed the church to act as “shining cities on a hill whose light drew unbelievers to God” in a dark world. This commitment to discipline allowed the churches in the south, particularly in Georgia, to grow at an exponential

For the women and African-Americans, they did not receive special treatment. Wills describes women as kept silent in the church, and while many black slaves did not have the time to regularly attend Saturday conferences, they became partially involved in the life of the church. In terms of church discipline, “churches evidently attempted to consider pleas of innocence fairly, but members of accused of offenses rarely denied their guilt” and subsequently lost membership. This chapter records the confessions of a few individuals, and many of the sincere confessors received new membership, while some suffered excommunication. While excommunication shamed former church members, Wills describes how Presbyterian churches shamed their unrepentant members by publishing it for the world to see. The process of restoration by unanimous decision is possible, and Wills recounts that churches allowed people back when they repented of their offense. The author in summary states “submission to the authority of the church was at the heart of the disciplinary apparatus [and] a particular transgression was secondary” in the church. The church in this period held great power, and the responsibility of the church to rightly judge the people are an issue frequently addressed at this