Minutes of the May 12, 1845 Foreign Mission Board Meeting with Preamble and Constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention

1. The Committee appointed by the delegates to the "Southern Baptist Convention", held in Augusta, Ga. May, 8th, 1845 to prepare and report a preamble and resolution for the action of the Convention presented the following report which was accepted, and separately adopted by the unanimous vote of the Convention. "The Committee to whom it has been referred to report a preamble and resolutions, cannot but express their profound sense of the responsibility resting upon your body at the present eventful crisis, as the integrity of the nation, the interests of truth, and the sacred enterprize of converting the heathen, are all involved in your deliberations. That this Convention was imperatively demanded, must be apparent to all. The "Boston Board" have, in their answer to the Alabama resolutions, most clearly and unnecessarily exceeded their power and violated their trust. "It is a question admitting no debate, that the Triennial Convention was formed on the principle of a perfect equality of members, from the South and North. And what is all important, the very qualifications of missionaries are prescribed by the original Constitution of that Convention, -- the fifth article providing that "such persons as are in full communion with some regular church of our denomination, and who furnish satisfactory evidence of genuine piety, good talents and fervent zeal for the Redeemer's cause, are to be employed as missionaries." "Besides this, too, the declaration of the Board, that if any one should offer himself as a missionary, having slaves, and should insist on retaining them as his property, we could not appoint him," is an innovation and a departure from the course hitherto pursued by the Triennial Convention (such persons having been appointed.) And lastly, the decision of the Board is