Stewart, A[lbert] T.

John, 1:12; 13. God's Plan in Saving the Human Race. The Part of Man in His Salvation. [Cover title].

[Tyler, Texas?]: [1911 or earlier]. 8½” x 5¾”. Stapled wrappers. Pp. [1], 7. Good: wrappers partially detached, some creasing and old folds.

This is the unrecorded text of a sermon by a Black Baptist preacher named A.T. Stewart. Stewart was born in 1862 in Mississippi, and may have been born enslaved. He became a preacher in Macon, Mississippi in 1890, and as of 1898 had written two books, The Immortality of the Human Soul, and Immersion the only Christian Baptism. We know that he wrote at least three other pamphlets because we offer them below, along with The Immortality of the Human Soul. As of 1899 Stewart was pastor of the First Baptist Church on Pine Street in Natchez, Mississippi. He was in Helena, Arkansas as of 1901 and settled in Texas no later than 1904. As of 1911 he was the field secretary for the National Baptist Convention. As of 1918 he was the Dean of Systematic Theology at the East Texas Baptist Bible and Normal Institute in Tyler (ETBA). ETBA opened in 1905 as a combined segregated elementary and high school, was renamed Butler College in 1924 when it started adding junior college level courses and lasted in various iterations until 1972. We note that Stewart also referred to ETBA as the “East Texas Baptist Bible and Normal Institute” and the school was also known as the “East Texas Normal and Industrial Academy.” As of 1923, Stewart was also the Assistant Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Convention of Texas. He passed away in Tyler, Texas in 1952 and a middle school there is named after him.

Stewart was certainly headstrong and confrontational when one considers just his documented conflicts. The first we find is in 1893 when Stewart was in Macon, Mississippi and another Black preacher, Thomas W. Davis, accused him of horsewhipping his wife on the street. From Newspapers.com we learn that in 1899 Stewart was arrested in Natchez after he “undertook to fill the pulpit at Mount Helm Baptist Church last Sunday against Faith Doctor Jones . . . and was charged with disturbing public worship.” By 1901 he was preaching in Helena, Arkansas where he got into a row with the Second Baptist Church. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, some of Stewart's parishioners got an injunction against him continuing in the role as pastor; he fought it and lost. In 1904, the Austin American Statesman reported that Stewart refused to be an usher at the National Baptist Benefit Association convention, with Stewart saying to the president, E.C. Morris,“I have been a member of this convention for twenty years and it is beneath my dignity. I did not come here to seat people, and decline to serve.” Stewart also played an important role in the 1915 split between the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Publishing Board.

This sermon began:

“What part does man occupy in his salvation? And what is the manner of his actions in that part, if there be any? Can humanity accept any other plan, other than that found in the Word of God for his salvation and be saved? These questions can better be answered by the word of God, and whatever the word of God says about them is true, it is true that there is a plan by which men are to be saved, and that plan God Himself is the author.”

Our date attribution is based on another copy we handled that had “1911” written on the front wrapper, and our place attribution is tied to the fact that Stewart was living in Tyler as of 1911.

OCLC and Google searches find nothing similar. Good. Item #8569

Price: $950.00