History

History of First Baptist Church of Louisville, Georgia

By John Russell

January 2023

The history of the First Baptist Church of Louisville, Georgia, spans over 200 years. The Ozias Baptist Church, which began in 1821 in Jefferson County, Georgia, dissolved in 1844 because of theological division among its members. One of the most influential voices of early 19th-century American evangelicalism was Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), a leader of the Restoration Movement and founder of the Disciples of Christ denomination. Campbell’s baptismal theology divided many Baptist churches in Antebellum America. “Campbell… rejected the Baptists’ requirement of a conversion testimony prior to baptism. [He] asked only for a profession of faith in Jesus and implied that baptism secured forgiveness of sins and regeneration of the believer.” [1] Baptists believe that faith alone, not baptism, secures forgiveness of sins. According to W. L. Kilpatrick, “Certain parties holding the peculiar tenets of the Rev. Alexander Campbell were charged with negotiating with some of the members with a view to the entire organization declaring those teachings, all of which was stoutly opposed by [Deacon Sherod] Arrington, and the controversy resulted in the dissolution of the church, each seeking individual membership according to his affiliations.” [2] Arrington and like-minded Ozias members founded a new church in Louisville along with members from Providence and Ways Baptist churches.

Thirteen charter members constituted the Louisville Baptist Church on June 8, 1844. The charter members were: Sherod Arrington, Frederick Kicklighter, Nathaniel Polhill, Irvin Coleman, Mrs. Anna Miller, Mrs. J. T. Bothwell, Mrs. Harriet Lowry, Mrs. Mary A. Kicklighter, Mrs. Henry Batty, Mrs. Dr. Thomas Batty, Mrs. Holt, Mrs. Lumpkin, and Mrs. Sikes. The congregation met in Louisville’s interdenominational Union House (at the corner of present-day Cherry and Seventh Street). On September 14, 1844, the Louisville Baptist Church united with the Hephzibah Baptist Association. The HBA minutes state, “A letter was received from a newly constituted Church at Louisville, Jefferson county, and upon examination of her faith, she being found orthodox, was admitted into our union.” [3]

Frederick Kicklighter and Nathaniel Polhill represented Louisville Baptist Church as delegates to the inaugural Southern Baptist Convention.[4] This meeting took place in Augusta, Georgia, from May 8 to 12, 1845. The messengers to the first SBC met “for the purpose of carrying into effect the benevolent intentions of our constituents, by organizing a plan for eliciting, combining and directing the energies of the whole denomination in one sacred effort, for the propagation of the Gospel.” [5] Our church still cooperates today with other SBC churches in “one sacred effort.” We give through the Cooperative Program of the SBC for “the propagation of the Gospel.”

Kicklighter built Louisville Baptist Church’s first sanctuary at the corner of present-day Walnut and Seventh Street in 1845. The church purchased the property from Mr. Foley. The total construction cost was $1,000. Kilpatrick writes of this building, “In securing funds with which to build, friends both in Savannah and on Beech Island, S. C., responded very liberally.”[6] Louisville Baptists worshipped in this building until 1892. Unfortunately, no photograph of this building exists.

Baptists in the South separated from Baptists in the North over slavery. Before the Civil War, Louisville’s membership included enslaved people. Black members often outnumbered white members. Louisville Baptist Church had a balcony for its black members. Antebellum Baptists “believed that social distinctions toppled under the leveling power of the gospel… Yet white Baptists found it impossible to overcome the ideology and the reality of social inequality. The churches expressed the social inferiority of African Americans most visibly in the seating of their meeting houses…Baptists assigned the blacks to the worst seats.”[7] In 1867, Louisville’s 145 black members separated to form their own church.

One Sunday afternoon in January 1879, Louisville’s pastor, Rev. W. L. Kilpatrick, addressed the congregation, speaking against dancing. Appealing to 1 Corinthians 8:13 (“Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend”), Kilpatrick urged the congregation to abstain from dancing.[8] On March 30, 1879, the church removed two members for dancing. Nineteenth-Century Baptists considered dancing to be sinful. Yet, this incident made state headlines. The Columbus Daily Enquirer-Sun reported, “Two members of the Louisville Baptist Church have been stricken from the roll for dancing.” [9] One of the two, J. M. Kelley, wrote a letter to the editor of the News and Farmer “in order that public opinion may do me justice… I say that there is not a single member of the Louisville Baptist Church, who knows no fewer wrongs than the innocent girl whose name they have blotted from their list.” [10] Although this issue was once controversial, most Baptists no longer consider dancing sinful.

On April 23, 1893, the members of Louisville Baptist Church dedicated their new building. Willis F. Denny, a Louisville native who became a famed Atlanta architect, designed this sanctuary, his first work. According to the local newspaper, “In style the architecture is semi-Gothic, although the tower is constructed somewhat on the plan of the towers to the old and Moorish castles of Spain… The auditorium has four large double windows on each side of stained glass, and above the pulpit is a beautiful memorial window of Mosaic work.”[11] Instead of pews, the original sanctuary had opera chairs, which seated 300. The building and furnishings cost $6,000. At the dedication service, Lee Caulk, Nellie Patterson, Dr. Pierce Hubert, and J. R. Phillips sang “Jerusalem, My Glorious Home” with Emily Clark at the organ. J. G. Gibson, Secretary of the Georgia Baptist Convention, read Psalm 122 and preached a sermon on Ephesians 5:27, which says, “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” Many generations of worshipers sang, prayed, heard God’s Word read and preached, were baptized, and partook of the Lord’s Supper in the beautiful building until its demolition in 1967.

In 1924, a significant tent revival spiritually impacted the churches of Louisville. Dr. George W. Truett, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, from 1897 to 1944 and namesake of Truett-McConnell University and the George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, preached a ten-day revival in Louisville. The revival services, lasting from September 25 to October 5, met in a tent seating 3,500 people erected across from Louisville Baptist Church. W. W. Abbott, president of First National Bank, organized this revival with the cooperation of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of Louisville. Louie D. Newton, who later became president of the Southern Baptist Convention, attended the revival. He wrote, “The whole town seems to have turned aside to seek religion and to pray and sing.”[12] This revival inspired Louisville Baptist Church to construct a Sunday School annex, built in 1938 and expanded in the 1950s. This building, the Abbot Memorial Annex, still stands at the corner of Seventh and Walnut streets in Louisville.

By the 1960s, Louisville Baptist Church became known as First Baptist Church. The old 1893 sanctuary needed remodeling, but church leaders determined it would be better to relocate. In 1963, the W. R. Sinquefield family donated the land to erect a new sanctuary. The church contracted James Buckley of Swainsboro as the architect and church member J. P. Morgan as the contractor. After breaking ground for the new campus on April 3, 1966, First Baptist Church completed its relocation to 101 East Ninth Street in May 1967. On the first Sunday in the new building, the congregation met at the old 1893 sanctuary at 9:30 AM and processed a half mile to the new campus with a police escort led by Chief Paul Hattaway. Imogene Achorn cut the ribbon to the new building. On June 25, 1967, First Baptist Church held a formal dedication service for the new campus. The old 1893 sanctuary was demolished. The bell from the old 1893 sanctuary hangs from the current church sign at the corner of Ninth and Mulberry Street. After seven years, the church paid off its indebtedness and held a note-burning ceremony in May 1974. Over the past fifty years, the members of First Baptist Church have maintained their beautiful building through additions, remodels, and renovations.

Today, First Baptist Church of Louisville continues to gather each Lord’s Day to worship Jesus Christ through singing, praying, hearing God’s Word read and preached, and observing the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We praise God for being “our help in ages past, [and] our hope for years to come.”[13]

Former Pastors

  1. Joel P. Leverett (1844, 1857)
  2. Charles Mercer Irwin (1845-1846)
  3. James Hall Tanner Kilpatrick
  4. Jonathan Huff (1847-1848)
  5. Lawrence Roberts (1848-1849)
  6. William Mathusen Verdery (1849-1854, 1883-1891)
  7. Joseph Polhill (1855-1856, 1858)
  8. Elijah J. Pannel (1859-1860)
  9. Owen C. Pope (1861)
  10. Moses Powell Cain (1862-1865, 1868)
  11. Thomas D. Key (1866)
  12. Samuel L. Roney (1867)
  13. William Hudson Davis (1869)
  14. Egenardus Ruthven Carswell (1870)
  15. Thomas J. Cumming (1870-1875)
  16. Wiley T. Holmes (1876)
  17. Washington L. Kilpatrick (1877-1881)
  18. John Hamilton Carswell (1882)
  19. George Robert McCall (1892-1895)
  20. William Ellis Perryclear (1896-1898)
  21. Erasmus Zeruleus Franklin Golden (1900-1907)
  22. Jacob Bowman Holley (1908-1910)
  23. Lucius Burton Johnson (1911)
  24. James Pressley Craft (1912-1915)
  25. John Gordon Gunter (1916-1925)
  26. Warren Monroe Marshall (1926-1933)
  27. Henry Jerome Stokes (1934-1938)
  28. Hubert Ernest Gaddy (1938-1941)
  29. Abner Thaddeus Persons (1942-1943)
  30. Benjamin Castles McWhorter (1944-1951)
  31. Henry Jerome Gambrell (1952-1958)
  32. Grady Harding Summer (1958-1986)
  33. Harold E. Armstrong (1987-1991)
  34. Joseph Coleman Farrington (1991-1996)
  35. Freddie Williford (1997-2000)
  36. Larry Montgomery (2001-2008)
  37. Hardy Owens (2009-2012)
  38. Jonathan Witt (2013-2018)
  39. Jonathan Melchior (2019-Present)

 

Music Directors

  1. B. P. Ramsey (1941)
  2. W. S. Murphy, Jr. (1942-1952)
  3. R. M. Smith (1953-1954, 1956-1959)
  4. R. H. Matthews (1955)
  5. Mary Lou Cain (1960-1962)
  6. Rosa Green (1962, 1965-1966)
  7. Polhill Koenig (1964)
  8. Gloria Cooper (1967-1972)
  9. Spencer Beckum (1973-1974)
  10. Bobby Carson (1974-1977)
  11. Bill Smith (1978-2016)
  12. John Russell (2018-Present)

[1] Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins, Baptists in America: A History (New York, Oxford University Press, 2015), 139.

[2] W. L. Kilpatrick, The Hephzibah Baptist Association Centennial: 1794-1894 (Augusta, GA: Richards and Shaver, 1894), 238.

[3] Minutes of the Hephzibah Baptist Association, Held at Jourdan’s M. H., Washington County, on the 14th, 16th, and 17th September, 1844 (Augusta, GA: James McCafferty, 1844), 2.

[4] Proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, held in Augusta, Georgia, May, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, 1845 (Richmond, VA: H. K. Ellyson, 1845), 9.

[5] Ibid., 3.

[6] Kilpatrick, Hephzibah Baptist Association Centennial, 236, 238.

[7] Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997), 62-63.

[8] Louisville News and Farmer, January 30, 1879, Page 2, Columns 1-2.

[9] Columbus Daily Enquirer-Sun, April 11, 1879, Page 3, Column 1.

[10] Louisville News and Farmer, April 3, 1879, Page 3, Column 2.

[11] Louisville News and Farmer, April 27, 1893, Page 3, Column 2.

[12] Atlanta Constitution, September 28, 1924, Page 2B, Column 2.

[13] Isaac Watts, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” Public Domain.