Father of Landmarkism (James N. Griffith Series in Baptist Studies)

Very good read, used it for Seminary.

Published in 2013, this 202 page hardback book chronicles the life of Ben Bogard, the famous Landmark Baptist preacher and one of the key founders of the American Baptist Association. The book is published by Mercer University Press and is part of their James N. Griffith Series in Baptist Studies. The author of the book, J. Kristian Pratt, is currently a professor of Religion at Spartanburg Methodist College.The conservative Baptist ecclesiology of the nineteenth century known as Landmarkism continues to gather interest at the seminary level with new “scholarly” biographies of noted Landmarkers such as J.R. Graves and J.M. Pendleton being written in the last decade. This new biography of Bogard will add to that genre. Pratt gives an excellent overview of Bogard’s life from his time as a local Baptist pastor to becoming the leader of the Landmark Baptists who formed the American Baptist Association. Whether pastoring dozens of churches, engaging in 237 public debates, holding 302 revival meetings, editing several Baptist newspapers, serving as a seminary president and founding a new denomination made up of hundreds of churches, Pratt takes you along this journey as Bogard becomes one of the most influential Baptists in America in the early twentieth century.For anyone interested in American Baptist History, it’s an enjoyable story to read about. There’s the time in 1880 when the outlaw Jesse James shared the hospitability of the Bogard family and told tales of his travels to a twelve year old Ben Bogard. Then there’s the time in 1928 when Bogard fiercely defended the free speech rights of Charles Smith, one of his debating opponents, who had been jailed for violating an Arkansas law against atheism! Or the time Bogard returned to Princeton, Kentucky to preach a Homecoming service and was arrested for public drunkenness! (Some say he took too much homemade cold medicine!) And of course the 1950 schism between the American Baptist Association and what became the Baptist Missionary Association is told in great detail.However the book does have some problems. Bogard was a native Kentuckian, living in the Bluegrass State for the first 26 years of his life. It was in Kentucky that Bogard was born, saved, baptized, ordained, married, educated, and pastored at least eleven different churches. Kentucky Baptist pastors such as J.N. Hall and J.B. Moody left a lasting impression on Bogard’s life. Unfortunately there are only 13 pages in the book that deal with Bogard’s time in Kentucky. In a book about the “Life of Ben M. Bogard,” much more needs to be written about his early influential years in Kentucky.There are also some historical mistakes in the book that Pratt needs to correct in future editions. On page 5 Pratt writes, “while attending church in Georgetown (Kentucky), Bogard witnessed a Methodist woman join the church without undergoing believer’s baptism.” In the “Penick-Bogard Debate” (published in 1910) Bogard tells how this woman joined the local Baptist church in Georgetown on her Methodist immersion. Pratt gives the impression this Baptist church accepted infant baptism or baptizing by pouring as valid baptism. While there were a handful of churches in Kentucky in the late nineteenth century that accepted non-Baptist immersions as valid baptisms, there were none in the state that accepted infant baptism or pouring for baptism. Pratt needs to rewrite this paragraph.Also at times Pratt is very critical of Bogard’s theological views, calling his logic tortured and specious, his analogies weak, and declaring his interpretations of scripture full of presuppositions. While writing only the second ever full length biography on this key Landmark Baptist leader, Pratt himself is decidedly anti-landmark in his own personal views. Although it is true the 1965 “Life and Works of Benjamin Marcus Bogard,” may have been guilty of hagiography, this volume often has the opposite effect. The reader needs to be aware of Pratt’s biases when reading this volume.For the reader who wants to know more about the American Baptist Association and influence Ben M. Bogard exerted through this fellowship, this book is a wonderful source of information. The index needs to be updated. Such important Baptists as J.B. Moody, T.P. Crawford, and O.L. Hailey mentioned in the book are not listed in the index, and others such as J.N. Hall are only partially indexed. Some pictures of Bogard inside the book would also be a great addition. However for readers who want to know more about Landmarkism among independent Baptists or Landmarkism in the Southern Baptist Convention (both in the nineteenth century and in the present day), they will have to look elsewhere. While Ben M. Bogard is definitely the father of associational landmarkism, he is only one of the fathers of modern landmarkism.