Shawomet Baptist Church records (MS.2011.018)

Historical Note

The Shawomet Baptist Church was officially organized in 1842 as the Old Warwick Baptist Church. The original congregation of "Six Principle" Baptists combined resources with Regular (Calvinist) Baptists, whose numbers were growing as a result of the Second Great Awakening, to occupy a small meetinghouse on the Warwick Neck peninsula in Rhode Island. In 1851 their name was officially changed to Shawomet Baptist Church. The word Shawomet is the Narragansett Indian name for Warwick Neck.

The early history of the church was characterized by a series of religious revivals and financial setbacks. In 1884 the congregation built a church which was destroyed two years later by a mysterious fire. In 1888 another new church was dedicated (that building suffered two major fires in its turn in 1927 and 1957) and the membership continued to grow under a series of pastors. Like so many congregations, Shawomet reached its peak membership during the economic boom years of the 1950's and 1960's, when the congregation was involved in multiple club and educational activities.

In addition to the building fires of the twentieth century, the Shawomet Baptist Church endured several crises of leadership. In 1917 its pastor, Rev. G. B. Cowell, succumbed to the influenza pandemic. The years of Rev. Paul Dreschler's pastorship, from 1967 to 1977, were characterized by personal problems that included his alcoholism and divorce. His tenure ended when he announced from the pulpit that he was homosexual. He was succeeded by the Rev. Donald Valentine who alienated several church officers, including the financial secretary, who subsequently resigned. The new financial secretary, Joseph St. Germaine, systematically looted more than $25,000 from church accounts before being discovered in 1986.

By the 1980's, church membership was declining, one result of the demoralizing effects of the financial and leadership troubles of the previous decades. The sudden death in 2010 of the pastor emeritus, Hank Pederson, signalled the end. Shawomet Baptist Church officially closed on May 15, 2011.