Corporate Prayer Among the Baptists (Santamaria)

CORPORATE PRAYER AMONG BAPTISTS

FOREWORD

This is an excerpt from an upcoming eBook titled Corporate Prayer?

Guillermo Santamaria

Corporate prayer—people praying together as a gathered body—is as old as the Scriptures themselves, but its shape and meaning have shifted across time and traditions. Let’s trace the thread.

Roots in the Hebrew Bible

Israel was not just a collection of individuals but a covenant people. Prayer was often offered communally:

The Psalms themselves are largely written in the plural voice (“we,” “our”) and were sung in temple worship (Psalm 95, Psalm 106).

At the Temple dedication (1 Kings 8), Solomon leads all Israel in prayer.

In times of crisis, leaders call for the nation to gather for prayer and fasting (Joel 2:15–17).

So, the idea that God’s people cry out as one voice is baked into Israel’s liturgical DNA.

Jesus and the Early Church

Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s Prayer in the plural (“Our Father… give us this day our daily bread…”), signaling that prayer was never merely a private affair but a shared act of dependence.

The Book of Acts shows the earliest Christians praying corporately:

Acts 1:14: “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer.”

Acts 4:24–31: The church lifts up its voice together, and the place is shaken.

Corporate prayer was tied to unity, mission, and empowerment.

Patristic and Medieval Practice

The early church quickly formalized corporate prayer into liturgies—structured prayers recited in unison or responsively. By the second century, the Didache already prescribes times of shared prayer.

Monastic traditions intensified this: monks prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, a cycle of psalms and prayers binding the community in continual intercession. Corporate prayer here was not just spontaneous but a discipline that ordered time itself.

Reformation and Post-Reformation

The Reformers critiqued empty repetition but did not abolish corporate prayer.

Luther retained set prayers and emphasized congregational singing as “prayer with melody.”

Calvin introduced the pastoral prayer, a lengthy intercessory prayer offered by the minister on behalf of the congregation, emphasizing the congregation’s participation through the “Amen.”

Puritans emphasized both gathered prayer meetings and household prayer, often seeing them as signs of spiritual vitality.

Among Baptists and other Dissenters, weekly gatherings for prayer meetings became central, sometimes more well-attended than preaching services.

Modern Developments

By the 18th and 19th centuries, corporate prayer expanded beyond the Sunday assembly:

The Concerts of Prayer¹ (transatlantic prayer movements) fueled revivals.

Missionary and evangelical societies organized corporate prayer days.

In many evangelical churches, the midweek prayer meeting was considered the heartbeat of the congregation.

Yet in recent decades, especially in the West, such prayer meetings have often declined, with more emphasis placed on small-group prayer or spontaneous worship service prayers.

Theological Significance

At its core, corporate prayer reflects three convictions:

The Church is one body—praying together enacts spiritual unity.

Prayer is priestly work—the gathered people intercede for the world.

God promises special presence—“Where two or three are gathered in my name…” (Matt. 18:20).

Corporate prayer, then, is not an optional add-on to private devotion. From the Temple courts to medieval choirs, Puritan kitchens, and modern revivals, it has been the way communities embody their shared dependence on God.

Old School Baptists (OSB) did not object to corporate prayer as such—they practiced it in their meetings, and their writings are full of references to the saints gathering to “bow before the throne of grace.” What they did object to was formalized, mechanical, or institutionally enforced prayer, especially when bound up with innovations like mission boards, Sunday Schools, or liturgical forms.

Here’s the nuance:

Corporate Prayer in OSB Worship

In a typical Old School meeting, prayer was central: one or more elders would pray aloud on behalf of the assembly, and the congregation would unite with “Amen.”

Prayer also opened and closed their services, association meetings, and business sessions. The Black Rock Address (1832), for example, was prefaced with prayer, showing it was an assumed part of their corporate life.

They viewed such prayer as Spirit-led, not pre-scripted. Elders often stressed that true prayer could not be “taught by man” but must be given by the Spirit (Romans 8:26).

What They Objected To

Set or written prayers

They strongly opposed the use of liturgies, prayer books, or memorized recitations. To them, this was “dead formality” rather than “living prayer.”

Organized prayer societies

The 19th century saw the rise of “monthly concert of prayer” meetings (often interdenominational) promoted by missionary boards. OSBs condemned these as unscriptural institutions that bypassed the local church’s independence.

Humanly scheduled “revival prayer” practices

They rejected the idea that prayer meetings, when strategically multiplied, could “produce revival.” That smacked of means-based religion.

Their Theological Rationale

Sovereignty of God

They believed prayer is effective only because God has already purposed what will come to pass. Thus, corporate prayer is a response of faith, not a lever to change God’s plan.

Experiential religion

Genuine prayer arises from the Spirit’s intercession in the heart (Romans 8:26). To Old School Baptists, this was just as true in the assembly as in the closet.

Church purity

They saw “union prayer meetings” (with Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.) as compromising—since prayer implies fellowship, joining with other denominations in organized prayer was a kind of false unity.

In Practice

So while Old School Baptists prayed corporately every time they met, their prayers were:

Unwritten

Led by those called

(ministers, sometimes brethren in good standing)

Spontaneous and Spirit-guided

Confined to the local church/association setting

not outsourced to broader evangelical structures

If you read Signs of the Times or the Black Rock Address in this light, it becomes clear: the OSB didn’t reject praying together—they rejected any “corporate prayer” that became a human-devised system instead of the Spirit moving God’s gathered people.

Human Will vs. Spiritual Compulsion

Old School Baptists taught that you can always attempt to pray—move your lips, kneel, recite words. But unless the Holy Spirit moves the heart, those words are just “vain repetitions” (their frequent citation of Matt. 6:7).

Gilbert Beebe put it bluntly in an 1860 editorial:

“We may go through the form of prayer at any time we please, but the spirit of prayer cannot be assumed at our bidding. It is the Spirit that maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Signs of the Times, 1860)

So, in their view, you can decide to kneel, but you cannot decide to pray spiritually in the sense of actually communing with God.

The Spirit Gives the Prayer

Romans 8:26 was their key text:

“Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought…”

They interpreted this to mean not simply that the Spirit “helps” you pray, but that he gives you the very breath and matter of prayer. Without that divine prompting, “prayer” is just words.

Why They Thought This Was Important

Prevents formalism

It kept them from using set prayers, rote “closing prayers” in services, or scheduled intercessions as if God were obligated to respond.

Protects God’s sovereignty

They saw prayer not as a lever to make God act but as the Spirit’s own work in God’s people in line with His eternal purpose.

Maintains humility

The believer doesn’t “initiate” communion; he’s drawn into it.

How They Practiced It

They still prayed at stated times (opening/closing worship, meals, family worship).

But they believed a brother or sister should only pray aloud if they genuinely felt “liberty” to do so—if the Spirit was moving.

In their language, someone might say, “I felt no liberty to pray” at a certain time, and they would simply remain silent rather than force words.

In Short

You can decide to pray externally at will—fold your hands, speak words. But true prayer in the Old School Baptist sense is never at your will; it’s at God’s. They saw this as the difference between “lip service” and “spiritual intercession.”

This is why in their periodicals you often find them warning about “prayer without unction” or “the form of prayer without the spirit of prayer.

Here are some direct Old School Baptist statements on prayer that show how they answered the question of whether one can “pray at will” or whether true prayer must be Spirit-given:

Gilbert Beebe (Signs of the Times, May 15, 1851):

“Prayer is not a labor or duty performed to obtain grace, but a breathing of the quickened soul after God... True prayer is always inspired by the indwelling Spirit, who alone knows the mind of Christ.”

Samuel Trott:

“Prayer is not the cause of spiritual life, but the breath of it. The child of God cries because he lives, not to make himself alive.”

Thomas P. Dudley (Letter to Beebe, c. 1854):

“We do not deny the benefit of prayer... but when it is employed as a means to bring down God’s blessing, or to stir up the Spirit, it becomes a work of the flesh. True prayer is the motion of the inner man, under divine influence.”

Beebe again (Signs of the Times, Feb. 1, 1843):

“Some suppose that if God has predestinated all things, then prayer is useless. But this shows ignorance of both prayer and predestination... It is God who works in us to will and to do.”

Trott :

“Prayer is not the means of begetting spiritual life... It is the child who cries after its Father, not the dead sinner calling life into himself.”

Synthesis

A person can speak words or decide to kneel at any time, but that is not what they meant by prayer.

True prayer is Spirit-breathed, the cry of a living child of God, not the act of an unregenerate or the forced effort of a believer “without liberty.”²

They consistently rejected the idea of “prayer as a means to get grace,” treating it instead as evidence of life already given.

So in Old School Baptist thought, you cannot “pray at will” in the spiritual sense. The will can form words, but only the Spirit moves the soul to truly commune with God.

Early American Baptists (1600s–1700s)

Before the Old School split, colonial Baptists in New England and the South followed the same pattern as their English forebears: prayer was offered in corporate worship alongside preaching and singing. Church covenants from places like Providence (1639) and Welsh Tract (1701) all mention gathering for “prayer and ordinances.”

But there was little debate—it was assumed. The arguments arose later, when prayer meetings became tools of revivalism.

Old School Baptists (1800s)

By the early 19th century, New School Baptists (the “missionaries”) were organizing extra-church prayer societies—monthly “concerts of prayer,” women’s prayer unions, and missionary prayer circles. Old School Baptists recoiled, not from prayer itself, but from the idea that prayer could be organized, systematized, or used as a lever to bring revival.

Key voices:

Black Rock Address (1832)While not attacking prayer directly, it condemned “prayer meetings” as then promoted by missionary groups, because they were human institutions outside the local church.

Gilbert Beebe (Signs of the Times, 1830s–50s)Beebe affirmed corporate prayer in church meetings but stressed:

“True prayer is always inspired by the indwelling Spirit, who alone knows the mind of Christ.”

For him, a minister could call the church to prayer, but only the Spirit could give liberty.

Samuel Trott

“Prayer is not the cause of spiritual life, but the breath of it. The child of God cries because he lives, not to make himself alive.”Trott’s point: corporate prayer doesn’t create revival or regeneration—it is evidence of life already present in the body.

Thomas P. Dudley (Letter to Beebe, c. 1854)

“We do not deny the benefit of prayer… but when it is employed as a means to bring down God’s blessing, or to stir up the Spirit, it becomes a work of the flesh. True prayer is the motion of the inner man, under divine influence.”

What They Practiced

Church meetings: Always opened and closed with prayer, led by an elder or a brother with liberty.

Associations: Began sessions with prayer, sometimes with special days of fasting and prayer if providentially burdened.

In homes: Families and brethren gathered spontaneously to pray when impressed by the Spirit.

They rejected:

Scheduled “union prayer meetings” across denominations.

Prayer societies as evangelistic machinery.

Any concept that corporate prayer could “cause” God to save sinners (they mocked “prayer to bless the means”³).

Summary

Continuity: Old School Baptists inherited corporate prayer from their English and colonial Baptist ancestors—it was never abandoned.

Distinctive Emphasis: They defined it strictly as Spirit-led, within the gathered church, not institutionalized or mechanized.

First clear OSB statements: Black Rock (1832) and early Signs of the Times articles in the 1830s–40s, where leaders like Beebe and Trott drew the line between true corporate prayer (organic, Spirit-moved) and false corporate prayer (organized, “means-based”).

Endnotes

1. “Concerts of Prayer” were one of the big flashpoints in the 18th–19th centuries, and they explain a lot about why Old School Baptists were so wary of organized prayer meetings.
   
   The Origin
   The idea goes back to the Scottish Presbyterian “Concerts of Prayer” in the 1740s, around the time of the revivals known as the “Great Awakening.”
   Ministers in Scotland and New England (like Jonathan Edwards) circulated appeals calling on churches in different places to set aside specific times (monthly, quarterly, annually) to pray together for revival and the spread of the gospel.
   Edwards even published a treatise in 1747: An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer — basically a manifesto for “concerted prayer.”
   This was the first time in Protestant history that prayer was deliberately organized across congregational lines, with fixed times and global aims.
   
   The Spread
   By the late 1700s and early 1800s, “concerts of prayer” became a standard part of evangelical revivalism.
   Missionary and benevolent societies (Bible societies, tract societies, Sunday School unions) adopted them as a way to galvanize popular support: you’d gather people, pray for revival, pray for missions, and collect funds.
   These prayer concerts were often interdenominational, involving Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and “New School” Baptists.
   
   Old School Baptist Objections
   When the Old School split happened (Black Rock Address, 1832), concerts of prayer were explicitly in view.
   They objected that such institutions had no biblical warrant and usurped the role of the local church.
   To them, “extraordinary prayer” organized by men’s societies looked like man trying to stir up the Spirit—a “means” of grace, not the Spirit’s free work.
   Gilbert Beebe and Samuel Trott often warned that if God intends to revive or bless His people, He Himself will move them to prayer—not a committee.
   In Signs of the Times, Beebe once called these union prayer meetings “a carnal show of zeal,” contrasting them with the true Spirit-given groanings of Romans 8:26.
   
   The Broader Legacy
   Evangelicals continued to run “concerts of prayer” throughout the 19th century. The great 1857–58 Prayer Revival in New York (Jeremiah Lanphier’s Fulton Street meetings) grew directly out of this model.
   For Old School Baptists, though, this was Exhibit A of why they broke fellowship: prayer harnessed as a human program rather than a Spirit-driven act of the body.
   
   In Short
   Concerts of Prayer = organized, cross-denominational prayer meetings for revival/mission.
   First launched in the 1740s (Scotland/New England, Jonathan Edwards).
   Old School Baptists opposed them because they represented institutionalized “means” of grace, rather than the spontaneous liberty of the Spirit within the local church.
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2. That’s a sharp question, because what you’re circling around is the difference between “duty-faith prayer” and Spirit-wrought prayer. Among the English Baptists, especially the Calvinistic or Particular Baptists of the 17th–18th centuries, there was a split in emphasis on whether prayer is always a binding duty of all people, or whether true prayer exists only when the Spirit compels it.
   17th-Century Baptists
   Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), a leading London Particular Baptist, taught that prayer is indeed a Christian’s duty, but he also stressed that it must come “with the Spirit.” In his catechism, he asked: “What is prayer?” Answer: “It is an offering up of our desires to God, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit.” That last phrase was crucial: without the Spirit, it was not true prayer but mere formality.
   Hanserd Knollys (1599–1691) and others in the same stream often warned against “lip-labour” in prayer. They spoke of the need to feel a divine “liberty” in prayer. Without it, one might go through the motions, but the exercise lacked reality.
   The 1644 London Baptist Confession (early Particular Baptist statement) said prayer must be made “in the strength and assistance of the Spirit.” This is not the same as saying you should never attempt to pray unless you feel moved, but it shows they equated true prayer with Spirit-compulsion.
   18th-Century High Calvinists
   As time went on, especially among the “High Calvinist” and “Strict and Particular” Baptists:
   John Gill (1697–1771) was explicit: “Prayer is not of man’s power. It is the Spirit that gives the grace of supplication.” Gill could admit people can say prayers anytime, but insisted that real prayer comes only as a gift of the Spirit (Romans 8:26).
   John Brine (1703–1765) pressed the same line—he warned against turning prayer into a “duty-faith” ordinance for all men.
   Hyper-Calvinist & Strict Baptists (18th–19th centuries)
   By the late 18th and early 19th century, in the circles that later fed into the Gospel Standard Baptists in England, the language became very sharp: prayer without unction was “mockery,” and saints often wrote in their experiences, “I felt no liberty to pray.”
   Joseph Hussey (1660–1726), in God’s Operations of Grace, but No Offers of His Grace, was blunt: prayer is not a “duty” that men can perform at will—it is the breath of the Spirit in the regenerate.
   The Gospel Standard Articles (drawn up 1878, rooted in earlier English High Calvinism) state that “the prayers of the ungodly are an abomination unto the Lord”—a clear rejection of universal duty-prayer.
   In Sum
   So, to your question “how many?” — quite a large proportion of the Particular/Calvinistic Baptists, especially those who leaned into High Calvinism or what became known as Hyper-Calvinism, spoke in exactly this way:
   Prayer at will = mere lip-labour.
   True prayer = Spirit-given, and often only when the believer feels liberty or compulsion.
   The more “moderate Calvinists” (like Andrew Fuller in the late 18th century) pushed back hard, arguing that prayer is a duty of all men, regenerate or not. That was one of the dividing lines between Fullerites (missionary Baptists) and the Strict/Old School Baptists, both in England and later in America.
   Would you like me to pull together a string of primary quotes (Gill, Knollys, Hussey, Gospel Standard Articles) where they actually phrase it in terms of liberty or compulsion in prayer? That would give you the raw voices. ↩︎
3. That phrase — “prayers to bless the means” — comes right out of the Old School Baptist polemics in the 19th century. It was shorthand for a kind of praying they thought was both unscriptural and dishonoring to God.
   What the phrase meant
   Among the “New School” or “Missionary” Baptists, it was common in the early 1800s to open and close revival meetings, missionary society gatherings, Sunday Schools, and even sermons with prayers asking God to “bless the means.”
   The “means” referred to human activities: preaching arranged as a revival effort, tracts, Sunday Schools, mission boards, educational institutions, etc.
   To pray “Lord, bless these means” was to assume that these institutions or activities were the channels through which grace would flow if only God would add His power.
   Why Old School Baptists opposed it
   Old School ministers like Gilbert Beebe, Samuel Trott, and Thomas Dudley heard that language constantly from their opponents — and they hated it. Their objections ran on three fronts:
   Doctrinal – They believed salvation is wholly of God’s sovereign grace, not mediated through “means” devised or arranged by men. To them, praying “bless the means” implied that God’s grace was waiting on human machinery.
   Beebe wrote in Signs of the Times (1840s) that prayer is never to sanctify human institutions, but to express dependence on God’s will.
   Practical – They saw that in practice, such prayers served to endorse unscriptural innovations. Once a church began praying “God, bless our missionary society,” it had already assumed the society was legitimate.
   Experiential – In their view, true prayer arises when the Spirit moves a saint to cry to God. A prayer crafted to ask God to “bless the means” was formal, agenda-driven, and man-centered.
   Typical Old School response
   Trott once called these prayers “vain repetitions, designed to give a holy gloss to human schemes.”
   Dudley wrote: “We do not deny the benefit of prayer; but when it is employed as a means to bring down God’s blessing, or to stir up the Spirit, it becomes a work of the flesh.”
   Beebe in 1851: “Prayer is not a labor performed to obtain grace, but a breathing of the quickened soul after God.”
   In short
   “Prayers to bless the means” were petitions asking God to empower or approve man-made religious efforts — revival meetings, missions, Sunday Schools, etc. Old School Baptists rejected the whole idea because it turned prayer into a stamp of approval for human systems. For them, prayer was never a lever to get God to honor man’s methods, but the Spirit’s own groaning in God’s children, in line with His eternal purpose.
   Among the English Baptists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, several influential voices emphasized that prayer was not simply a duty that could be performed at will, but had to be compelled and given by the Spirit.
   Hanserd Knollys recounted that in his early Christian walk, he abandoned all set forms of prayer once he experienced the Spirit’s “assistance” in prayer. In his autobiography, he described how, after praying extemporaneously with his brother, he “found so great assistance from God at that time that I never used any set form of prayer afterwards”. For him, true prayer was Spirit-led, not self-initiated.
   Joseph Hussey, a forerunner of English Hyper-Calvinism, taught in his writings (God’s Operations of Grace) that prayer without the Spirit’s operation was part of “natural Arminianism.” He warned against viewing prayer as a mechanical duty or humanly chosen act, stressing instead the necessity of Christ’s Spirit to lead and sustain true prayer.
   Later Particular Baptists, influenced by this stream, absorbed these emphases. Wayman’s Enquiry shows that Joseph Hussey’s books were “carefully absorbed” by English Baptists in the early 1700s and shaped their view that prayer, like faith, could not be exercised at will but must flow from divine compulsion.
   So while not every English Baptist framed it identically, leading figures like Knollys and Hussey explicitly tied prayer to inward compulsion, rejecting the idea that one could simply decide to pray as a duty apart from the Spirit. This line of thought deeply influenced later Strict and Gospel Standard Baptists, who famously stated that “the prayer of the ungodly is sin” and that even the regenerate must wait for liberty of the Spirit before praying aloud.
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