James Madison Pendleton (1811–1891) was a leading 19th-century American Baptist preacher, educator and theologian.
In his lifetime he pastored churches at Bethel, Hopkinsville, and Bowling Green in Kentucky; Murfreesboro in Tennessee; Hamilton in Ohio; and Upland in Pennsylvania.
Pendleton, Amos Cooper Dayton, and James Robinson Graves, due to the work and influence, were known as "The Great Triumvirate" of the Landmark movement.
According to David Dockery and Timothy George in Baptist Theologians, "Pendleton's desire to restrict Landmark ideology to the central issue of the authority and function of the local church, his atypical Southern opinions regarding slavery, and his desire to preserve the union of the United States" led toward a breach and dissolution of the "Triumvirate" following the Civil War.
[2] Pendleton, Dayton, and Graves articulated and promoted landmark beliefs through their books and newspaper articles in the Tennessee Baptist.