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Richard Furman was a Baptist clergyman and educator. He was an influential member of the convention which in 1790 drew up a constitution for South Carolina.
Background
Richard Furman was born in Esopus, New York. In the summer of 1755, his father, Wood Furman, a native of Long Island and a merchant in New York, had gone with his son to South Carolina, leaving temporarily in the North his wife, Rachel Brodhead, and their daughter.
After Richard’s birth, the mother went by sea with the two children to join her husband, and the family finally settled near Charleston.
Education
Wood Furman knew enough mathematics to do surveying, while his general intellectual ability led to his selection as local magistrate and judge of probate. He himself looked after the education of Richard, who had little if any conventional schooling.
Career
In May 1770, the family moved to the High Hills of Santee, where young Furman came under religious convictions and united with the Baptist Church. He began almost immediately to preach, and in May 1774, before he was nineteen, was ordained as pastor of the local church.
As the Revolution approached, he took a positive stand on the side of the colonies. He even marched to Charleston with a company commanded by his brother, but Gov. Rutledge advised him to return home where his influence was strong.
Later, Cornwallis placed a price upon his head, and Furman betook himself to North Carolina and Virginia till the war was over. Upon his return, although considerably under thirty, he was the outstanding leader of the Baptists of his state, and soon, of the South.
In 1787, this position was made more strategic by his call to the pastorate of the Baptist Church at Charleston. Furman was an influential member of the convention which in 1790 drew up a constitution for South Carolina; this abrogated the special privileges of the Episcopal Church and granted all religious denominations the right of incorporation.
As early as 1785, he brought forward a plan for the incorporation of the Charleston Baptist Associatlon, and in 1819, he advocated the plan of the Charleston Association as a basis for uniting the Baptists of South Carolina in a General Association.
This scheme was thwarted by conservatism and suspicion of centralization, but when, two years later, the Baptist State Convention was organized, he became inevitably its first president.
In no area was Furman’s influence more important for the South and the Baptists than in that of education. As the Baptists had no school of theology until well along in the nineteenth century, he himself had often taken into his household young men who desired training for the ministry.
In 1789, sensing the need of broader educational opportunities for prospective ministers, he devised a plan to secure funds for this purpose in the stronger churches, and this movement soon became more definitely organized with Furman as its official leader.
When the proposal was made that the Baptists of South Carolina and Georgia unite in founding a collegiate institution, he was one of its leading proponents.
He did not live to see the fruition of this effort, but within fifteen months of his death, his name was given to the academy and theological institution which soon became Furman University. When the Baptists of the United States were awakened to their foreign missionary opportunity by the acquisition of Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice Furman was alert to see the possibilities of “enlarged expressional activities, ” although the phrase arose at a later time.
At the meeting called at Philadelphia in 1814 to organize the missionary and other general activities of the Baptists, he was from the first a recognized leader, and was chosen president of the new organization, the Baptist Triennial Convention of the United States.
At its second meeting in 1817, he was re-elected to this office; his address at this time on ministerial education is considered to have been a factor in the establishment of Columbian College.
Although a number of Furman’s discourses were printed, his writings do not bear much evidence of the tremendous personal influence which he exerted. For almost fifty years probably no one man in the South had a wider one. It was based upon sheer character and ability, and was always used for the higher interests of mankind.
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Politics
Furman became a Federalist in politics and was always a champion of strong, centralized authority.
Views
Furman favored an ecclesiastical polity which, in so democratic a group as the Baptists, called for a greater degree of centralization than that acceptable to most of his codenominationalists.
He advocated no organization beyond what he considered necessary for efficient functioning in the varied enterprises dependent upon the churches, but he did not stress the safeguards to the independence of the local church which mark the slower evolutionary process of Baptist ecclesiasticism in recent times.
Quotations:
"The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Furman's chief biographer designates him as “the incarnation of the Anglo-Roman spirit of the organization. ”
Connections
In November 1775, Furman married Elizabeth Haynesworth, whose brother had married Richard’s only sister. Elizabeth died in June 1787, and on May 5, 1789, Furman married Dorothea Maria Burn.