Emir Caner brings keynote address at first GBC History Conference

The Georgia Baptist Convention held its first history conference at the Georgia Baptist Conference Center in Toccoa Aug. 28-29. The theme of the Conference was “A Legacy of Firsts.”

J. Gerald Harris

Truett-McConnell College President Emir Caner addresses the crowd on the legacy of Georgia Baptist pioneer Daniel Marshall. The GBC’s first history conference was held Aug. 28-29 in Toccoa.

GBC Assistant Executive Director/Vice President for Operations Mike Williams presented the theme interpretation based on Matthew 6:33 – “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” – and expressed hope that the history conference might become the “first” of an annual event.

A drama, written and directed by Allison Harvey, an administrative assistant in the Church Minister Relations Department of the GBC, depicted the Georgia Baptist Convention beginning at Powellton in 1822.

Qualified facilitators provided workshops on various aspects of Georgia Baptist history, including sessions on how to preserve history through writing and album making.

Emir Caner, president of Truett-McConnell College, was the keynote speaker. He spoke on the legacy of Daniel Marshall, a pioneer Georgia Baptist, and entitled his presentation, “The Forgotten Hour of How the South Was Won.”

Caner stated, “Georgia Baptists found a close relationship with the Anabaptists of the 16th century. Painted with that background, Georgia Baptists can easily see why the first Baptist Church, Kiokee Baptist Church, was incorporated as the Anabaptist Church on the Kioka.”

Caner indicated that his

presentation would highlight three essential principles between Anabaptists and Georgia Baptists: (1) religious liberty, (2) the Great Commission, and (3) the New Testament church.

Caner explained that Daniel Marshall, who founded the Kiokee church in 1772, and his brother-in-law, Shubal Stearns, formed Sandy Creek Church seventeen years earlier in North Carolina.

Caner explained, “Stearns, Marshall, and others formed Sandy Creek Church, a congregation that birthed a movement which provided a third stream in Baptist life, distinct from Regular Baptist (who were strict Calvinists) and General Baptists (who were strict Arminians).”

The TMC president contin?ued, “No wonder John Leland, the famed Baptist pastor in Virginia and champion of religious liberty, witnessed the phenomenal movement of Sandy Creek and described it as follows: ‘The preaching that has been most blessed by God, and most profitable to men, is the doctrine of sovereign grace in the salvation of souls, mixed with a little of what is called Arminianism.’”

Caner emphasized that Marshall’s delight was in “preaching to the poorest of the poor” and extending an

invitation to “such persons as these felt themselves poor guilty sinners.”

“Poor historical work and reactionary exegesis based on one’s theological framework caused division between Regular Baptists and Separate Baptists 250 years ago,” declared Caner, “and will do so again today unless this type of ignorant argument is cast aside and thrown down the abyss from whence it came.

‘Hold fast to the foundation’

“Our heritage as Georgia Baptists, and a proper understanding of Scripture and its Anabaptist descendents, requires us to discard any theological framework that diminishes the call to salvation and removes the urgency of such an appeal.” Caner said. “Our survival and future literally depends on holding fast to the foundation which was laid in Scripture and followed by our Georgia pioneers.”

Caner concluded, “In 1845, as the Southern Baptist Convention was being formed in our backyard (Augusta), Separate Baptists passed the ‘Declaration of Faith,’ which advocates openly through Article Six, ‘the freeness of Salvation,’ that ‘nothing prevents the salvation of the greatest sinner on earth, except his own voluntary refusal to submit to the Lord Jesus Christ.’”

Caner’s full address here

J. Gerald Harris

Actors portray the lives of early Georgia Baptists in skits.

J. Gerald Harris

Actors portray the lives of early Georgia Baptists in skits.

J. Gerald Harris

GBC Associational Missions Specialist Frank Nuckolls participated in a skit portraying the lives of early Georgia Baptists.