Kehukee Baptist Association formed from stolen churches

In 1765, the Kehukee Baptist Association met for the first time and was organized as an association. The Philadelphia Baptist Association had commissioned Peter Van Horn and Benjamin Miller as missionaries to go south into North Carolina to “visit the churches and preach the Gospel.” Their mission was to churches, not to the masses moving into the southern Colonies. Specifically, the two missionaries visited General Baptist churches planted by Paul Palmer and other “Free-will” Baptists.

According to Kehukee’s historian,

Through their instrumentality [Van Horn and Miller], many people were awakened; many of the members of these churches were convinced of their error, and were instructed in the doctrines of the Gospel; and some churches were organized anew, and established upon the principles of the doctrine of grace. These churches, thus newly constituted, adopted the Baptist confession of faith, published in London in 1689, containing thirty-two articles, and upon which the Philadelphia and Charleston Associations are founded. […]

THUS, by means of those ministers who visited the churches, several were reformed, and the work of reformation progressed, until the greater part of what few churches were gathered in North Carolina, both ministers and members, came into the Regular Baptist order. [...]

The churches thus reformed, although but few in number, entered into an association compact about the year of 1765, and first convened at Kehukee, from whence the Association took the name of the “Kehukee Association.” Thus, being formed in a body, they corresponded with the Charleston Association; and in this situation they continued some years, until the year 1774, when an alteration took place…¹

For my part, it’s beyond difficult how the Philadelphia Baptist Association can claim it was sending “missionaries” when what they were doing was sending representatives from the association to “Calvinize” non-Calvinist churches.

Is it not reasonable to conclude that rather than preaching the gospel to the heathen, they were proselytizing members from other churches?

Is this the same type of “reformation” taking place in many Southern Baptist churches?

¹Burkitt, Lemuel, Henry Lemuel BURKITT, and Jesse Read. A Concise History of the Kehukee Baptist Association, from its original rise down to 1803… Revised and improved by Henry L. Burkitt.(Appendix. Biography of Elder Lemuel Burkitt and his family, by Dr. Wm. PA Hail.). Lippincott, Grambo & Company, 1850. pp. 15-17.