“Seals of my ministry”

Abstract

Before Oliver Hart’s arrival in Charleston, the Southern colonies had produced none of their own indigenous ministers, having always looked to the Northern colonies or to Great Britain to supply their pulpits. One of Hart’s most significant contributions was to address this need. He personally trained in his home many young Baptist men called to gospel ministry and led the Charleston Association to found the minister’s education fund, the first cooperative education effort by Baptists in America. Hart actively recruited young ministers from other regions to fill the empty pulpits of the South and counseled other novice pastors on a variety of issues in his extensive correspondence. This chapter uncovers the greatest crisis of Hart’s pastoral career, the near-usurpation of the Charleston Baptist pulpit by one of his own trainees, Nicholas Bedgegood. It also recounts the story of the conversion and ministerial call of one of Hart’s most significant protégés, Edmund Botsford.