Eld. David Marks: Free Will Baptist Itinerant Preacher in Ontario

Abstract

David Marks’s (1805-1845) Memoirs opens a window on the soul of one zealous itinerant of an American evangelical group in the first part of the nineteenth century. The Free Will Baptists, founded by Benjamin Randall in New Hampshire during the Revolutionary War and known as an evangelical “New Light Stir,” grew along with settlements in northern New England, New York, the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. As part of this westward migration of New Englanders, the Free Will Baptists established their work in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada and somewhat later, in the western portion of Upper Canada. Marks is a representative figure in the Second Great Awakening of the evangelical Christian mindset known as “ultraism” that flourished in western New York between 1820 and 1840. The term “ultraism” was first coined by a Presbyterian writer in the heart of the “Burned-over District” to describe evangelical Christians of this particular ethos. The author in question used it disparagingly as a short-hand expression for “religious fanaticism,” referring more to a mind-set than a specific group; there nevertheless seems to have been a high percentage of Free Will Baptists who fit the description. Ultraists tended to translate moral principles into social and ethical absolutes; they were either completely for a practice or group or in vehement opposition. David Marks’s resistance to Free Will Baptists being members of secret societies, such as the Free Masons, is illustrative: