James Robinson Graves is known as the father of Landmarkism. In 1851, Graves called a meeting at the Cotton Grove Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee to react to the liberalism creeping into the Southern Baptist Churches. This group formed the Cotton Grove Resolutions which became the organizational document for Landmarkism:
Can Baptists with their principles on the Scriptures, consistently recognize those societies not organized according to the Jerusalem church, but possessing different governments, different officers, a different class of members, different ordinances, doctrines, and practices as churches of Christ?
Ought they to be called gospel churches or churches in a religious sense?
Can we consistently recognize the ministers of such irregular and unscriptural bodies as gospel ministers?
Is it not virtually recognizing them as official ministers to invite them into our pulpits or by any other act that would or could be construed as such recognition?
Can we consistently address as brethren those professing Christianity who not only have not the doctrine of Christ and walk not according to his commandments but are arrayed in direct and bitter opposition to them?
The following syllogism expresses Landmarkism.
Major premise: To be valid, Christian ordinations and baptisms must be performed by a valid New Testament church.
Minor premise: Only valid Baptist churches are valid New Testament churches.
Conclusion: Therefore, only ordinations and baptisms performed by valid Baptist churches are valid Christian ordinations and baptisms.
Among the common tenets of most Landmark churches are the following: Baptist succession, only the visible church is the true church for this age, and opposition to alien baptism, that is, any baptism that is not performed under the auspices of a landmark Baptist church, and closed communion. Because Landmark Baptist Churches considers church membership so important, they hold to closed communion which refuses to allow any believer who is not a member of that local Baptist church to participate in the Lord’s Supper. There are two other views concerning who can participate in the Lord’s Supper. The liberal view is the open view that allows all to participate whether they are believers or not. No restrictions are stated before the communion is observed. The Biblical view is called close communion. Only believers are invited to participate in the Lord’s Supper whether they are members of that particular Baptist church or not. This is the correct view. Communion is a picture of our communion with the Lord according to 1 Cor. 11. The believers at Corinth had been chastened by the Lord because they had partaken of the Lord’s table in an unworthy manner as Paul describes in 11:17-22, not because they were members of another local church.