Eric C. Smith is Senior Pastor of Sharon Baptist Church in Savannah, Tennessee, and Adjunct Professor of Historical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also the author of Order & Ardor: The Revival Spirituality of Oliver Hart and the Regular Baptists of Eighteenth-Century South Carolina (2018).

"Smith has done an exemplary job of demonstrating Hart's seminal role in American Baptist development in the eighteenth century. One hopes for similar fresh studies of figures such as Edwards and Gano, as well as younger contemporaries such as Richard Furman, Thomas Baldwin, and John Leland. Embedded in their overlapping stories is the larger story of how Baptists in America evolved from backwater sectarians in 1715 to a national evangelical denomination by 1815." -- Nathan A. Finn, Southeastern Theological Review

"Smith has written a highly readable, elegantly presented, and well researched biography of a colonial pastor who likely deserves more attention than he has hitherto received. Even more commendable is Smith's ability to weave Hart's life into the context of colonial American society." -- D. G. Hart, Church History

"Smith's well-researched and lucidly-written work fills a major lacuna in Baptist studies by providing a focused history of eighteenth-century American Baptist development. Furthermore, by focusing on the life and ministry of Oliver Hart and his promotion of the "Baptist interest," Smith tells a multi-faceted story that captures both the denominational history as well as the realities of everyday existence as lived by one leading exponent. Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America deserves a wide reading among historians of the period as well as those who maintain some affnity with the denomination." -- Dustin Bruce, Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies

"Smith tells a multi-faceted story that captures both the denominational history as well as the realities of everyday existence as lived by one leading exponent. Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America deserves a wide reading among historians of the period as well as those who maintain some affinity with the denomination." -- Dustin Bruce, Journal for Andrew Fuller Studies