In a previous post, I gave a brief biographical sketch of the Free Will Baptist farmer-preacher John R. Gower, who served in the Cumberland Association in Middle Tennessee during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this essay, we will explore how the cultural context of Gower’s life informs our understanding of the temperance movement in the Cumberland Association specifically and among Southern Free Will Baptists generally.
Temperance Reform
The temperance movement began in New England and areas receiving heavy New England emigration, like Upstate New York and Ohio, in the mid-1810s. The reformers were motivated by fears surrounding the War of 1812, a marked rise in alcohol consumption flowing from the dropping price of whiskey, and the precipitous decline of the Federalist political party outside of New England.[1] Federalist religious leaders like Lyman Beecher began pursuing legislative action to achieve social moral reform.
Marxist historian Paul E. Johnson argues that the standardization of work habits and the separation of factory owners from their employees in the process of industrialization significantly contributed to building support for temperance among the respectable urban middle class and, only later, the working class as they sought to rise socially. However, Johnson’s interpretation fails to account adequately for the multiplicity of motivations for temperance advocates or explain the persuasiveness of the movement’s millenarian aspirations. Robert H. Abzug maintains that temperance spread beyond the ranks of Northeast elites when the religious fervor and postmillennialism of the revivals of the 1830s were coupled with modern scientific statistics about the effects of alcohol consumption of all sorts.[2]
According to revivalists like Charles G. Finney and Timothy Dwight Weld, who extolled the Northern Freewill Baptists for their early fervor in the temperance cause, the will of man was free to choose between good and evil without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. They called upon their audiences to will into existence a coming utopia founded on temperance. If alcohol consumption were allowed to continue, the revivalists and reformers claimed that statistical evidence showed a future of assured national destruction.
In their fervor, the reformers externalized the causes of sin to the bottle, making alcohol the cause of all manner of wickedness in society rather than the sinfulness of man working its way out through drunkenness. Furthermore, individual and social salvation came through signing the temperance pledge of a local temperance society and harnessing the power of individual will rather than faith in Jesus and engagement with the ordinary means of grace. For these reasons, many conservative religious leaders, especially among low church Protestants and Southerners, opposed the temperance movement prior to the Civil War.[3]
Southern Temperance
Southerners who embraced temperance in the late nineteenth century tended to be evangelical Populists who argued that the consumption of alcohol links to crime and dishonorable activities like gambling, horse racing, and fighting, which made it a blight on society. The Southern cultural emphasis on local limited government meant that most Southern temperance advocates were moderates and tended to favor private solutions or local bans on the sale of alcohol rather than state-wide programs until the Populist movement emerged with its emphasis on social reform through legislation.[4]
Most radical prohibitionist organizations, founded and headquartered in the Northeast, eschewed individual moral suasion and local solutions, calling instead for statewide legislation.[5] For this reason, most late-nineteenth-century Southerners associated radical temperance with plans to modernize and remake the states of the former Confederacy in New England’s image.[6] The Farmer’s Alliance, one of the largest Populist agricultural cooperations, took up temperance reform as a central policy concern in the 1890s and made the issue more palatable to Southern farmers who were distrustful of Northern culture and interests.[7]
While the Randall Freewill Baptists of the North, predominately middle class and rooted in New England pietism, adopted temperance as early as the 1820s and radical temperance by the 1840s, the Southern Free Will Baptists had very few advocates for temperance reforms until the end of the nineteenth century.[8] The existing records suggest that most associations began making temperance resolutions and forming temperance committees to head up their efforts in the 1880s and 1890s, with a few outliers addressing the issue as early as the 1870s or as late as the 1900s. This shift parallels the rise of temperance interest in the South more broadly.[9]
Temperance and the Cumberland Association
The earliest known statements on temperance in the Cumberland Association were adopted as resolutions in 1876, 1878, 1879, and 1880.[10] Each year the same resolution against the sale, manufacture, and use of “intoxicating liquors” as a “beverage” was adopted because it was “unbecoming a Christian, and unsafe in a community.” The ministers of the association were “encouraged” to “use their influence to prevent either.”[11] These resolutions hold to a relatively moderate view on temperance, considering the consumption of alcohol for the purposes of a beverage as a mark against the Christian’s reputation and calling upon ministers to use their personal influence toward moral suasion against the use of alcohol as a beverage. However, they did not at this time state that alcohol was sinful in and of itself. During the next decade, the Cumberland Association’s focus on the topic of temperance seems to have wavered, with no resolutions on the matter being adopted.[12]
Though John Gower does not have a direct connection to the Cumberland Association’s early statements on temperance, he was actively involved in committee service and missions work in the association each of the years that the temperance resolution was taken up, and he is absent from the minutes in the years that lack any resolution. Furthermore, Gower’s interest in temperance clearly did not waver during the 1880s. In late July 1886, he opened his property to the local community groups committed to temperance for a barbecue hosted by the local chapters of radical temperance advocates. Hundreds of people came to eat, fellowship, share experiences of liberation from drink, and hear speeches on temperance.[13]
A decade after Gower allowed his land to be used for this gathering, the adherents to the movement were still “not numerous” in Montgomery County according to the local paper.[14] However, the radical temperance movement was helped along by the rise of Populism and the Farmer’s Alliance and the development of a method for bottling and preserving unfermented grape juice that could replace wine during communion services.[15] Therefore, Gower apparently embraced radical temperance rather early in comparison to his neighbors and promoted active government action for social reform along these lines.
In 1894, the first recorded temperance committee in the Cumberland Association proposed a two-part resolution that called upon the association “in common with other Christian organizations” to “recommend temperance for the individual, and we as a church, use our influence for the promotion of the temperance cause.” Furthermore, they recommended that “all ministers of this association give special attention to its [intemperance’s] evils, and that an unceasing effort be made by them to impress these truths upon their hearers.”[16] This moderate temperance statement continued to place the burden for temperate living on the individual morally persuaded to the rightness of the cause by the preaching of faithful ministers. In addition, a key motivation for pursuing this action was the opportunity to work in common with other Christian organizations.[17] The renewed temperance vigor in the Cumberland seems to have had some connections to this broader trend, but Gower’s more radical temperance associations suggest he would not have been satisfied with the moderation of the 1894 statement.
In 1895, the temperance committee issued a much more strident resolution that still adhered to individual responsibility and moral suasion. However, they issued a “demand” to “every member of this entire association” that “temperance in all its phases” be embraced. Ministers were called upon to preach against the evils of “the use of alcohol in any of its forms,” including for medicinal purposes or communion. Alcohol per se was condemned for having a “damning influence, and demoralyzing effects on the human race.”[18] This statement adopted the externalization of the evil of drinking to alcohol itself in all of its forms, whether distilled or fermented.
The 1896 resolution expanded significantly on the association’s previous statements in favor of temperance. The members of the association had shifted from viewing the drinking of intoxicating liquors as unbecoming a Christian’s reputation and unsafe in the community to risking eternal damnation. Also, rather than calling upon ministers to preach against intemperance and urging all individuals to practice self-control, they now called upon the state to eliminate the entire liquor traffic in order to preserve social order. Lastly, the expectations for members of Cumberland Association congregations shifted significantly. Whereas previous resolutions warned against intemperance, the 1896 resolution called for anyone who drank intoxicating liquors as a beverage to be excommunicated from the congregation.
However, apparently, the debate had not been completely resolved until 1900, when the Cumberland Association’s position seems to have solidified in support of state legislation banning all sale, manufacture, and consumption of alcohol in any form. By this time, prohibition legislation had been passed in many Southern local governments and was under consideration at the state level. [19]
Conclusion
The preceding historical analysis reveals the importance of considering the influence of historical circumstance and culture on theology. Our theology never develops in a vacuum; we are not merely brains in vats disconnected from the rest of creation. Culture is a part of God’s general revelation that informs our understanding and application of the Bible to our lives. This contention is not to say that biblical and theological arguments are nothing more than cultural. The truths of Scripture are universal and eternal. However, we err if we assume that our theological commitments are completely divorced from the particulars of circumstance.
As we refine and flesh out our theology, we must attend to the philosophical and cultural forces at play. In some circumstances, we may find that the cultural moment affirms Scriptural principles and situate our particular theological application of those principles in agreement with the culture. In other circumstances, when a culture advocates beliefs and practices that cannot be reconciled with our understanding of Scripture, we must recognize the difference and boldly proclaim the truth in spite of opposing social pressure.
[1] Whiskey prices were falling rapidly because the supply had expanded significantly when farmers in isolated areas like Upstate New York and Maine started turning their corn into liquid for easier preservation and transportation to market. For information regarding the political ramifications of this economic shift, see Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1999), 200–13; Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 188–89; Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), 413–14; and Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of The Early Republic, 1789–1815, Oxford History of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 162–64, 196–97.
[2] See Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 81–104; and Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837, 25 anniversary ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
[3] Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling, 81–104; Johnson, Shopkeeper’s Millennium, 127–28; Stevn Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 50–78.
[4] Ann-Marie E. Szymanski, Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 46–49; Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 76, 92–95.
[5] Szymanski, Pathways to Prohibition, 32–35.
[6] Joe L. Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 194.
[7] Postel, Populist Vision, 76.
[8] William F. Davidson, The Free Will Baptists in History (Nashville: Randall House, 2001), 244–47; Robert E. Picirilli, Free Will Baptists and Total Abstinence, Free Will Baptist Heritage Series: Foundations of Faith and Practice (Nashville, TN: Historical Commission of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, 2012), 4–7; Treatise on the Faith and Practice of the Free Baptists, Written Under the Direction of the General Conference, together with Usages of the Free Baptist Connection, and Digest of General Conference Law (Boston, MA: Morning Star Publishing House, 1895), 93, 159.
[9] A general survey of the existing minutes of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Free Will Baptist associations in the South reveals almost no discussion of temperance prior to the 1870s, though admittedly we have very few records for associations prior to 1880. William F. Davidson cites the unrecovered copy of the 1852 minutes of the Mount Moriah Association as an example of min-nineteenth century discussion of drunkenness but not necessarily temperance (Davidson, Free Will Baptists in History, 246). The Cumberland Association’s record holdings currently have a gap between 1843 and 1876. However, the first recorded resolution advocating temperance in the Cumberland Association was adopted in 1876, making it one of the first associations to hold this position among Free Will Baptists in the South. See Minutes of the Antioch Association of Freewill Baptists, 1899, 1903; Minutes of the Big Sandy Conference of Free Will Baptists, 1901; Minutes of the Cape Fear Conference of Free Will Baptists, 1872, 1884, 1885, 1890, 1901, 1903; Minutes of the Chattahoochee Association of Free-Will Baptists, 1885; Minutes of the Cumberland Association of Free Will Baptists,1843, 1876, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1890, 1894, 1895, 1896; Minutes of the Eastern Conference, 1901, 1905, 1911; Minutes of the Hamburgh Association of Freewill Baptists, 1891; Minutes of the Jack’s Creek Association of Free Will Baptists, 1905; Minutes of the Liberty United Free Will Baptist Association, 1893, 1896; Minutes of the Little Missouri River Association of Free Will Baptists, 1891; Minutes of the Martin Association, 1893, 1902; Minutes of the Middle Georgia Association of Free Will Baptists, 1897; Minutes of the Midway Association of Free Will Baptists, 1908, 1914; Minutes of the Mount Moriah Association of Free Will Baptists, 1855; Minutes of the Mount Zion Association of Freewill Baptists, 1898; Minutes of the Neuse Association of Freewill Baptists, 1880; Minutes of the Old Mount Zion Association, 1907, 1909; Minutes of the South Georgia Association of Free Will Baptists, 1903, 1905, 1907; Minutes of the Union Conference of Free Will Baptists, 1900; Minutes of the Western Arkansas Association of Free Will Baptists, 1894.
[10] The minutes for 1844–1875 and 1877 have not yet been recovered.
[11] Minutes of the Cumberland Association of Free Will Baptists, 1876, 1878, 1879, 1880.
[12] Minutes of the Cumberland Association of Free Will Baptists, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1890.
[13] Clarksville Weekly Chronicle, July 17, 1886; Leaf-Chronicle Weekly, July 20, 1886, and W. H. Hook, “A Big Barbecue: The Meeting of Several Lodges near Port Royal,” Clarksville Weekly Chronicle, August 7, 1886.
[14] “Cold Water Party: Candidate Hopwood Scheduled to Speak Here Saturday,” Leaf-Chronicle Weekly, August 5, 1896.
[15] Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause, 52–53.
[16] Minutes of the Cumberland Association of Free Will Baptists, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895.
[17] In the Nashville area, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians were actively pursuing temperance and held a large conference in 1896 to “plan a renewed fight against alcohol (W. Calvin Dickinson, s.v. “Temperance,” Tennessee Encyclopedia, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/temperance/).
[18] Minutes of the Cumberland Association of Free Will Baptists, 1895.
[19] In 1897, the temperance committee’s resolution called for ministers to advocate for and practice total abstinence from intoxicants because “intemperance is a curse to any nation,” but it did not call for state or local legislation. In 1899, the resolution was expanded to oppose fermented drinks in addition to distilled liquors. Minutes of the Cumberland Association of Free Will Baptists, 1897, 1899, 1908.
November 12, 2025
Well written and well researched. I’ve been curious about this.