KYCLAY-L Archives

From: "Jess Wilson" <>
Subject: [KYCLAY] WHAT'S A HARDSHELL BAPTIST
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 11:44:50 -0500

Diana wrote asking what was a Hardshell:

Hardshell Baptist usually called Privative or Predestinationist
Baptist adhere to a doctrine called Calvinism. Calvinism is
defined in the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, as “The religious doctrines of John Calvin,
emphasizing the omnipotence of God and the salvation of the
elect by God's grace alone.” John Knox in Scotland preached that
there were to be only 144,000 Saints in Heaven, at most. We have
fought wars and killed millions of people over even less trivial
differences of religious beliefs than this.
In layman terms Calvinism means, if you were born of the
elect, your soul was saved from the time of the creation of the
universe, if you were not elected at that time, you were damned
to go to Hell, which is too bad, there is nothing you can do
about it At least that is what I was told by my late brother,
Ance Wilson, an Elder in the Salem Primitive Church in Laurel
County. You can see the church house up on the left before you
get into Clay County.
One thing I admired about my brother’s faith was the
assurance it gave him. He once asked me to figure how much
electric heat they would need to heat their little church. I did
my calculations and came up with an amount to heat the room to a
comfortable level when it was zero degrees outside. My brother’s
comment was. “That’s too much. Figure it for 20 degrees above,
if it is colder than that, no one will come anyway.
An article “To Believe Like a Baptist” that I wrote
about this that appears in FIDDLER I ended with this; “ In case
you don’t know any Primitive Baptist I guess I should tell you
that my brother’s statement wasn’t meant to imply a lack of
Faith, but was an assessment of their convictions.”
On pages 180 to 187 of WHEN THEY HANGED THE FIDDLER are
some articles about the Primitive Baptist. If anyone is
interested I will make a pamphlet of them. I may still have
copies of History of Laurel River Association of Baptist
Churches or could print some more.
Loyal Jones of Berea has published a scholarly book on
the subject. I was able to furnish him some information. Now,
how it happens that I should become the possessor of at least 9
shelf feet of books on religion, church histories and related
matter, I have no idea. I even have the original church book of
a Primitive Baptist Church in Owsley County. I suppose my
brother, The Elder Ance Wilson, would say that it was
foreordained from the Beginning that it would be so. I rather
think that a flea on a rat during the Middle Ages might have
been more a part of my being born to do this. How is that? You
ask: The flea bite a person that died of the Black Plague and as
a result another person became one of my many, many ancestors.

JESS WILSON
99POSSUM TROT ROAD
MANCHESTER KY 40962

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• [KYCLAY] WHAT'S A HARDSHELL BAPTIST by "Jess Wilson" <>