The Great Triumvirate James R. Graves Through his
Tennessee Baptist newspaper, James R. Graves popularized Landmarkism, building for it a virtual hegemony among Baptists west of the
Appalachians. He and
Amos C. Dayton, who was also influential, were members of the First Baptist Church of
Nashville, Tennessee. He was especially popular in the states of the lower
Mississippi River Valley and Texas. In 1851, Graves called a meeting of like-minded Baptists at the Cotton Grove Baptist Church near
Jackson, Tennessee, to address five questions: • Can Baptists with their principles on the Scriptures, consistently recognize those societies not organized according to the Jerusalem church, but possessing different government, different officers, a different class of members, different ordinances, doctrines and practices as churches of Christ? • Ought they to be called gospel churches or churches in a religious sense? • Can we consistently recognize the ministers of such irregular and unscriptural bodies as gospel ministers? • Is it not virtually recognizing them as official ministers to invite them into our pulpits or by any other act that would or could be construed as such recognition? • Can we consistently address as brethren those professing Christianity who not only have not the doctrine of Christ and walk not according to his commandments but are arrayed in direct and bitter opposition to them? The majority of the gathered Baptists resolved these questions by non-recognition of non-Baptist congregations, and then published their findings as the "Cotton Grove Resolutions". The "Cotton Grove Resolutions" essentially comprise the organizational document of the Landmark Baptist movement.
James M. Pendleton James M. Pendleton was a Baptist pastor from Kentucky whose article
An Old Landmark Re-Set, a treatise against pulpit affiliation with non-Baptist ministers, gave the movement its name. His
Church Manual was also influential in perpetuating Landmark Baptist
ecclesiology. Although Pendleton was the only native Southerner in the Landmark Triumvirate, he was in favor of
emancipation and opposed
secession. As a result, his influence among Southern Baptists declined precipitously in the days leading up to the
American Civil War and he took a pastorate in Pennsylvania during the war.
Amos C. Dayton Amos C. Dayton's major contribution to Landmarkism was the novel
Theodosia Ernest (1857), which expressed religious issues and was first published in
The Tennessee Baptist.
Other influential Landmark Baptists • John N. Hall, publisher of the Kentucky
Baptist Flag newspaper, was a forceful advocate of both Landmarkism and the Gospel Mission Movement. • Ben M. Bogard, after leading a schism out of the
Arkansas Baptist State Convention became the most popular leader of Landmarkism into the twentieth century. •
Samuel A. Hayden led a schismatic movement in Texas that many have associated with Landmarkism. • Thomas T. Eaton championed Landmark sentiment in Kentucky and led the charge against anti-Landmark scholar William H. Whitsitt. •
John T. Christian prolifically defended the Landmark Baptist conception of Baptist successionism. •
James M. Carroll wrote one of the most enduring Landmark Baptist works,
The Trail of Blood, a history of the Baptist movement. • A number of prominent Southern Baptist leaders were also Landmark Baptists although their primary contributions to Baptist history lay in fields other than ecclesiology. ==See also==