Introduction

Eric Smith has written a superb biography of John Leland. Leland was a larger-than-life character in both Baptist and American history, and he deserves this sort of historic and biographical treatment. Smith presented Leland in true form, including both his grandeur and his foibles. Smith begins and ends this story just as Leland himself did, giving the reader a panorama of Leland’s early-life formation and his eventual demise. With the chapters in between, Smith helps the reader understand Leland’s place in Baptist and American history, even addressing some of the scholarly debate (Leland’s Calvinism or lack thereof) and an area of popular interest in our current cultural moment (Leland’s vacillating position on American slavery and the plight of African Americans during the nineteenth century).

Smith says that his primary goal with this book is to “tell Leland’s story.”^[1] He has certainly accomplished this goal and more. He has presented the reader with a particular perspective of “the transformation of early America,” which as Smith says himself runs somewhat in parallel to Leland’s own life (roughly 1760-1840).^[2] Indeed, “John Leland’s life intersected [many] major themes” of religious and cultural development in the fledgling nation.^[3]

According to Smith, Leland “has never received a full biographical treatment.”^[4] If this is so, then Eric Smith has certainly set a high standard for any that may come after. There may well be a more scholarly and technical biography written, and one might write a shorter and more popular level story, but Smith has shot the target right in the middle. This is no easy mark, and those of us who are interested in American, Christian, and Baptist history are grateful for the effort.

Book Summary

Smith begins the Leland story at his birth and early baptism. Leland was born on May 14, 1754, in Grafton Massachusetts. Leland’s own account of his baptism at three years old is the source of this tale, but it pictures Leland’s staunch independence whether it is true or not. In short, Leland was baptized by a Congregationalist minister at the command of his father, and all completely against his own will. If the story is true, then Leland came into the world believing “instinctively” that “religious acts must be free and voluntary to be genuine.”^[5] If it’s a tall tale, then Leland wanted everyone to think that his lifelong convictions regarding religious freedom and freedom of conscience were present from the earliest age.

While Leland’s first “baptism” was involuntary, the “two defining issues of his life, his conversion and his call to preach” were “resolved” between Leland and his God “alone.”^[6] Smith says, “at no point did [Leland] consult a local minister or involve the church in his spiritual quest” for spiritual conversion. Indeed, Smith notes, “his conversion story is striking for its solitary character.”^[7] So too, Leland “determined to present himself as a candidate” for baptism when a Separate Baptist preacher, named Noah Alden, “came to nearby Northbridge to hold a baptism service.”^[8] And Leland helped Alden baptize others immediately thereafter, Alden being “a short man and [fearing] that he could not raise all the female candidates from the water.”^[9]

Not long after that waterlogged day, Leland experiencing believer’s baptism and administering the same to others, Leland was at a “meeting” wherein “no preacher showed up.” Leland “stood to deliver the morning sermon,” and “from then on, John decided to preach at every opportunity he received.”^[10] And Leland didn’t just wait for opportunities to arise, he “launched into an itinerant ministry, setting up a forty-mile circuit around New England.”^[11]

Throughout this book, Smith is diligent to continue returning to the subject of Leland’s erratic and persnickety relationships with local churches, especially one in Cheshire, Massachusetts. Leland was an itinerant preacher first, and somewhere further down his list of priorities came the duties of pastoring among a local church. The first church that sought and embraced Leland as a pastor was Mount Poney Baptist Church in northern Virginia. They accepted Leland’s demands to be exempt from the customary examination and ordination by a board of local Baptist elders and also Leland’s refusal to preach at Mount Poney more than half the Sundays in a year.^[12] This arrangement lasted months, not years, and Leland continued his itinerant ministry in earnest. 

By the time Leland moved to Cheshire, Massachusetts, in 1793, he had made quite a reputation, and he was heavily involved in Baptist efforts in Virginia to pull on political levers in order to move the massive institution of religious establishment. Indeed, Smith notes that it was political expedience that compelled Leland finally to participate (if only farcically) in a formal pastoral ordination event.^[13] Leland was far more recognizable as a Jeffersonian political activist than as a typical Baptist elder or pastor in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, but Smith more than adequately demonstrates that Leland was a remarkable proponent of democratic-republicans like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

In the end, John Leland was a new kind of Baptist that would shape what it means to be Baptist in America for a long time to come. Smith even proposes through lines from Leland’s individualistic proclivity in the views of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Francis Wayland, J. L. D. Hillyer, and the notoriously individualistic E. Y. Mullins. Lamentably, Smith says, “Under Leland’s influence, Baptists ‘came to see the church as merely a gathering of like-minded individuals joined to observe the duties of religion rather than as a vital part of the saving process.’”^[14]

So too, many Baptists (certainly many Evangelicals) today might also lament the religious pluralism Leland embraced and promoted throughout his life. Unlike most Baptists of his day, Leland was not only willing but eager to dismantle any civil preference for Protestant Christianity. Leland believed that Christianity was true, and that it was the only hope of sinners around the world, but he also believed that absolutely nothing outside of a man’s own mind and conscience should compel him to embrace any doctrine.

Evaluation

Eric Smith has written this biography quite well. His historic detail is well-supplied, and his scholarly citations are numerous (even citing meticulous sources like church meeting minutes and newspapers). These features are combined with good storytelling and a quality writing style to give the reader a biography that is not only informative but enjoyable. The main character is interesting in his own right, drawing the reader into the turbulent waters of his life, and Smith acts as an informative tour guide, helping the reader to travel steadily down the various tributaries that all connect to this energetic river.

With a story like this, including several features and events that unfold over the course of years and even decades, it is hard to decide how to arrange the chapters. Smith seems to have chosen both of the two basic options – chronology and topic. Smith begins and ends the biography with the chronological beginning and end of Leland’s life. This suits the biography well, and it makes the reader feel as though the whole man has been on display from start to finish. But between these two ends, Smith allocated several chapters for various topics of great importance in Leland’s life – Leland’s radical independence, his populist Calvinism, his vigorous tribalism among democratic-republicans, and his not-so-consistent views on American slavery. The reader may have a tough time remembering where the story is at any given moment on the timeline of Leland’s life, trying to make comparisons in Leland’s progress or regress in one area with another, but the topics Smith covers deserve the lengthy and focused treatments.

Conclusion

This book was a joy to read. Smith’s introduction was particularly well-written and substantive, and his artistic conclusion revisited and tied together various pieces of the story quite well. Those who enjoy history, especially the religious history of America, will probably find this book among the better-quality biographies on their shelves. It has earned such a status in my own library.*

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^[1] Eric C. Smith, John Leland: A Jeffersonian Baptist in Early America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022). 8.

^[2] Smith, 9.

^[3] Smith, 9.

^[4] Smith, 8.

^[5] Smith, 11.

^[6] Smith, 5.

^[7] Smith, 24.

^[8] Smith, 30.

^[9] Smith, 30.

^[10] Smith, 31.

^[11] Smith, 31.

^[12] Smith, 43.

^[13] Smith, 73.

^[14] Smith, 127.