ABSTRACT
Confident in the growing dominance of the evangelical impulse in the major denominations of American Protestantism, Baird was convinced that a 'free market' in churches in both recently settled western areas and developing towns would guarantee Christian progress. This would require initial aid to support missionaries from existing prosperous religious communities. The form it usually took—partial funding to encourage fledgling churches to find the rest themselves—illustrates the parallels in the antebellum decades between the psychological and intellectual assumptions underlying liberal economics and religious voluntarism.
