Baptists

"Baptist" redirects here. For the Christian practice, see Baptism. For other uses, see Baptist (disambiguation).

Baptists form a major branch of Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and doing so by complete immersion (as opposed to affusion or aspersion). Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency (the responsibility and accountability of every person before God), sola fide (salvation by faith alone), sola scriptura (scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice) and congregationalist church government. Baptists generally recognize two ordinances: baptism and communion.

Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.

Founded by Jesus Christ in A.D. 30 They were tortured in the Dark Ages(The Inquisition) by the Roman Catholic Church because of their beliefs that baptism cannot save and before you must be baptized, you must first believe Christ. They formed separate congregations which accepted only believers into their membership, and they baptized converts upon their profession of faith.Their opponents nicknamed them “Baptists,” and the name stuck. They were first called "Ana-baptist" meaning rebaptism for they baptize members from the Catholic churches who were partakers of the so-called "infant baptism" and "baptismal regeneration". Baptist defended that they practice "proper baptism" which is baptism after faith in Christ rather than the other way around. The oldest church that can be traced in their history is the Wales Baptist Church administrated by Claudia and Pudens mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:21. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English dissenters under James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the First and Second Great Awakening increased church membership in the United States. Baptist missionaries have spread their faith to every continent.

REFERENCE https://kjvchurch.com/baptist-church-history-the-history-of-the-true-church-7/ ________________________________________ 11. The Anabaptists (3rd - 16th Century) A. The Anabaptists as a named group arose in the early 1500s in Germany. i. The term Anabaptist means one who re-baptizes. ii. Anabaptist - 1. lit. One who baptizes over again, whether frequently as a point of ritual, or once as a due performance of what has been ineffectually performed previously. 2. Ch. Hist. Name of a sect which arose in Germany in 1521. B. There were Christians who were called Anabaptists throughout time going back to the third century because they re-baptized converts who had been "baptized" as infants. i. "Osiander says, our modern anabaptists were the same with the Donatists of old." (G.H. Orchard, A Concise History of Foreign Baptists, page 87) ii. "In 1522 Luther says: “The Anabaptists have been for a long time spreading in Germany.” The late E.T. Winkler, D.D., quoting the above, says: “Nay, Luther even traced the Anabaptists back to the days of John Huss [1369-1415], and apologetically admits that the eminent reformer was one of them.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 303) iii. "Dr. E.T. Winkler says: “It is well known that the Anabaptists of Holland disclaimed any historic connection with the fanatical Anabaptists of Germany, but claimed a descent from the Waldenses.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 306) iv. "Dr. Osgood says of the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century: “The persecution of centuries had taught them concealment,” plainly implying their existence centuries before the days of Luther..." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 306) v. "Cardinal Hossius, President of the Council of Trent, which met Dec. 15, 1545, and one of the most learned Romanists of his day, said:... “If the truth of religion were to be judged of by the readiness and cheerfulness which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opinion and persuasion of no sect can be truer and surer than that of the Anabaptists, since there have been none, for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more generally punished, or that have more steadfastly under-gone, and even offered themselves to the most cruel sorts of punishment than these people. … The Anabaptists are a pernicious sect, of which kind the Waldensian brethren seem to have been. Nor is this heresy a modern thing, for it existed in the time of Austin.” Thus this great Romanish scholar concedes the sameness of the Waldenses and Anabaptists, and that they already existed in 354, the time of Austin." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 307-308) vi. "The Quaker, Robert Barclay, wrote: "We shall afterwards show the rise of the Anabaptists took place prior to the Reformation of the Church of England, and there are also reasons for believing that on the continent of Europe small hidden Christian societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the Apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of Divine Truth, and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Church." (Dr. Phil Stringer, The Faithful Baptist Witness, page 115) C. The Anabaptists believed in total depravity and election. i. "The Anabaptists believed children inherit the moral depravity of their parents. Denck [a great Anabaptist leader] said: “There is something in me that strongly opposes my inborn inclination to evil.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 187) ii. "The Anabaptists had no sympathy with the doctrine of infant damnation. “They denied that baptism is necessary for salvation and maintained that infants are saved without baptism and by the blood of Christ. But baptism is necessary for church membership.” As infants thus appear to need the “blood of Christ” it thus appears that these Anabaptists believe that infants are depraved, a belief clearly demanded by the Scriptures and maintained by all well instructed Baptists." (W.A. Jarrel (quoting Dr. Schaff), Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 193) iii. "These Anabaptists believed in election: [quoting Denck] “Christ, the Lamb of God, has been from the beginning of the world a mediator between God and men, and will remain a mediator to the end. Of what men? Of you and me alone? Not so, but of all men whom God has given to him for a possession.” John Muller, another Anabaptist leader, in 1525, wrote: “Since faith in the free gift of God and not in every man’s possession, as the Scriptures show, do not burden my conscience. It is born not of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God. … No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him. The secret of God is like a treasure concealed in a field which no man can find unless the Spirit of the Lord reveal it to him.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 188) D. The Anabaptists rejected the heresy of baptism regeneration. i. "They utterly rejected “sacramental salvation.” Grebel, a great Anabaptist leader, said: “From the scriptures we learn that baptism declares that by faith and the blood of Christ our sins have been washed away, that we have died to sin and walked in newness of life; that assurance of salvation is through the inner baptism, faith, so that water does not confirm and increase faith as Wittenberg theologians say, nor does it save.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 188) E. The Anabaptists believed in believers' baptism, and that it adds one to the local church. i. "In an Anabaptist confession of faith, called the "Schleitheim Confession," made in 1527, we read: “Baptism should be given to all those who have learned repentance and change of life, and believe in truth that their sins have been taken away through Christ.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 192) ii. "Fuller knew the English Baptists only as immersionists. He says: “These Anabaptists, for the main, are but ‘Donatists’ new dipped.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 214) iii. "Hubmeyer [a prominent Anabaptist in the 1520s] said: “In order to live a Christian life there must be a change in the natural man, who is by nature sinful and with no remedy in himself by which the wounds that sin has made can be healed. … When a man has received this new life he confesses it before the church of which he is made a member according to the rule of Christ; that is he shows to the church that, instructed in the Scriptures, he has given himself to Christ to live henceforth according to his will and teaching. He is then baptized, making in baptism a public confession of his faith. … In other words, in baptism he confesses that he is a sinner, but that Christ by his death has pardoned his sins, so that he is accounted righteous before the face of his God.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, pages 190-191) iv. [Quoting Hubmeyer, a prominent Anabaptist in the 1520s]: "‘Where there is no baptism there is neither church nor ministry, neither brothers nor sisters, neither discipline, exclusion nor restoration. As faith is a thing of the heart, there must be an external confession by which brothers and sisters can mutually recognize each other.’ Replying to Zwingli, Hubmeyer said: ‘We must do as God pleases, consult the word, not the church; hear the Son, not Zwingli or Luther." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 185) F. The Anabaptists were persecuted by Luther and the Protestants. i. "“That some of these preferred and practiced immersion we infer from the fact that their persecutors, who delighted in fitting the penalty, as they cruelly judged it, to the fault, put many of them to death by full immersion, swathing the sufferers to large sacks with their living contents into huge puncheons where the victims were drowned. So the Swiss, some of them, at least, immersed in rivers. This appears from the work Sabbata of Knertz, a contemporary Lutheran.” The translator of Luther’s Controversial Works, speaking of Luther’s sermon on Baptism, on p. 8, of his Introduction, says: “The sermon and letters are directed principally against the Anabaptists, a fanatical sect of reformers who contended that baptism should be administered to adults only, not by sprinkling, but by dipping.” A writer who has given this special investigation, says: “And thus it is through the whole book of Luther on the sacraments. I have read it over and over again, years ago, and marked all the places in controversy concerning the Anabaptists, and in not one single instance is there the remotest hint that they practiced sprinkling and pouring. … When the Anabaptists spoke of the sprinkling of the Lutherans they called it ‘a handful of water,’ doubtless in derision; and when they alluded to the dipping of Luther, without faith either on the part of the administrator or the subject, they called it ‘a dog bath,’ also in derision. Nothing satisfied them but the immersion of a professed believer.” Robinson says: “Luther bore the Zwinglians dogmatizing, but he could not brook a reformation in the hands of the dippers. … Notwithstanding all he had said in favor of dipping, he persecuted them under the names of re-dippers, rebaptizers, or Anabaptists.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 195-196) ii. "Gastins was wont to say, with ghastly sarcasm, as he ordered the Anabaptists to be drowned: ‘They like immersion so much let us immerse them,’ and his words became a proverb. Zwingli used to call them ‘bath fellows.’" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 197) iii. ""It is true, indeed, "says the same writer [Mosheim - a Lutheran], "that many Baptists suffered death, not on account of their being considered rebellious subjects, but merely because they were judged to be incurable heretics; for in this century, the error of limiting the administration of baptism to adult persons only, and the practice of re-baptizing such as had received that sacrament in a state of infancy, were looked upon as most flagitious and intolerable heresies. Those who had no other marks of peculiarity than their administering baptism to the adult, and their excluding the unrighteous from the external communion of the church, ought to have met with milder treatment."" (G.H. Orchard, A Concise History of Foreign Baptists, page 362-363) G. The Anabaptists were not persecutors like the Catholics and Protestants. i. [Quoting a tract written by Hubmeyer, a prominent Anabaptist in the 1520s]: "From this and many other passages of the Holy Scriptures, it appears that persecutors of heretics are themselves the greatest heretics. For Christ did not come to butcher, to kill and to burn, but to deliver and improve all. It is necessary, therefore, to pray for the improvement of the erring, and to look for it as long as a man lives. The Turk, or the heretic, can be overcome, not by fire or sword, but only by patience and instruction. Burning heretics is, therefore, nothing less than a sham confession and actual denial of Christ. … The chief art consists in testing errors, and in refuting them by the Holy Scriptures.” (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 186)

12. Baptist Churches in England (1st -21st Centuries) A. There is evidence that Christianity made it into Britain in the 1st century. i. "Rev, Francis Thackeray, A.M., formerly of Benbrooke College, Cambridge, from his Researches Into the Ecclesiastical and the Political State of Great Britain, is quoted: “We have reason to believe that Christianity was preached in both countries, Gaul and Britain, before the close of the first century. The result of my investigations on my own mind has been the conviction that about 60, A.D., in the time of St. Paul, a church existed in Britain.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 317) ii. "Bede says: “The Britains preserved the faith which they had received uncorrupted and entire in peace and tranquility until the time of the Emperor Diocletian.” Diocletian died A.D. 313." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 318) B. The Waldenses were in England in the 11th century. i. "Of the beginning of the eleventh century in England, Crosby says: “Though the baptism of infants seems now to be pretty well established in this realm, yet the practice of immersion continued many years longer; and there were not persons wanting to oppose infant baptism. For in the time of William the Conqueror and his son William Rufus, it appears that the Waldenses and their disciples, out of France, Germany and Holland had their frequent recourse and residence, and did abound in England." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 318) ii. "Says Benedict, quoting Jones: “Towards the middle of the twelfth century, a small society of these Puritans, as they were called by some, or Waldenses, as they were termed by others, or Paulicians, as they are denominated by an old monkish historian — William of Newbury — made their appearance in England. This latter writer speaking of them, says: They came originally from Gascoyne, where being as numerous as the sand of the sea, they sorely infested all France, Italy, Spain and England.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 327) C. The Lollards, who were Waldenses, and who were also know as Wickliffites (John Wycliffe) came to England in the 14th century. i. "In the time of King Edward the II., about the year 1315, Walter Lollard, a German preacher, a man of great renown among the Waldenses, came into England. He spread their doctrines very much in these parts, so that afterwards they went by the name of Lollards.” Fuller: “By Lollards, all know the Wickliffe’s are meant; so that from Walter Lollardus, one of their teachers in Germany … and flourishing many years before Wickliffe, and much consenting with him in agreement.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 319-320) ii. "As to the action of baptism, Wickliffe was certainly a Baptist. Says Armitage: “He always retains the preposition ‘in’ and never with ‘in water,’ ‘in Jordan.’” Says Armitage: “Froude finds a resemblance between some of Wickliff’s views, and others have claimed him as a Baptist.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 321) iii. "“That the denial of the rite of infants to baptism was a principle generally maintained among the Lollards or followers of Wickliffe, is abundantly confirmed by the historians of those times. Thomas Walden, who wrote against Wickliffe, terms this reformer ‘one of several heads who arose out of the bottomless pit for denying infant baptism, that heresies of the Lollards of whom he was the ringleader.’”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 321) D. The English Baptists were of the same faith and order as the ancient Donatists. i. "Fuller, the English church historian, asserts, that the Baptists in England, in his days, were the Donatists new dipped: and Robinson declares, they were Trinitarian Anabaptists." (G.H. Orchard, A Concise History of Foreign Baptists, page 87)

13. The Welsh Baptists of Wales, England (1st - 21st Centuries) A. Christians (Baptists) were in Wales, England as early as the 2nd century where they were persecuted by the Roman Catholic church. i. "Including Wales, Bede says the Britains were converted to Christianity in the second century and that they “preserved the faith, which they had received uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquility, until the time of Diocletian, A.D. 286.” In the year 603, Augustine, called also Austin, was sent to convert the Welsh Baptists to the Romish church. Bede records that they met him, charging him with pride, contradicted all he said, and that he proposed to them: “You act in many particulars contrary to our custom, or rather the custom of the universal church, and yet, if you will comply with me in these three points, viz.: to keep Easter at the due time; to administer baptism, by which we are again born to God, according to the custom of the Roman Apostolic Church; and jointly with us preach the Word of God to the English nation, we will readily tolerate all the other things you do, though contrary to our custom.” Bede says: To this “they answered, they would do none of these things, nor receive him as their archbishop; for they alleged among themselves that ‘if he would not rise up to us, how much more will he condemn us, as of no worth, if we shall begin to be under his subjection?’ To whom the man of God, Augustine, is said in a threatening manner, to have foretold, that in case they would not join in unity with their brethren, they should be warred upon by their enemies; and if they would not preach the way of life to the English nation, they should at their hands, undergo the vengeance of death. All which, through the dispensation of divine judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted.” But Bede states that fifty of their ministers “escaped by flight” from the slaughter of “twelve hundred” of their ministerial brethren. These were amply sufficient to propagate the true gospel; thus, preserving the perpetuity line to the Reformation." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 363-364) B. There is strong evidence that Christianity was introduced into Wales in the first century by Pudens and Claudia, two of Paul's converts (2Ti 4:21). i. "Davis says: “About fifty years before the birth of our Savior the Romans invaded the British Isle, in the reign of the Welsh king, Cassibellan; but having failed, in consequence of other and more important wars, to conquer the Welsh nation, made peace and dwelt among them many years. During that period many of the Welsh soldiers joined the Roman army and many families from Wales visited Rome, among whom there was a certain woman named Claudia, who was married to a man named Pudence. At the same time Paul was sent a prisoner to Rome and preached there in his own hired house for the space of two years, about the year of our Lord 63. Pudence and Claudia, his wife, who belonged to Caesar’s household, under the blessing of God on Paul’s preaching, were brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, and made a profession of the christian religion. Acts 28:30; 2 Timothy 4:21. These, together with other Welshmen, among the Roman soldiers, who had tasted that the Lord was gracious, exhorted them in behalf of their countrymen in Wales, who were at that time vile idolators. … The Welsh lady Claudia, and others, who were converted under Paul’s ministry in Rome, carried the precious seed with them, and scattered it on the hills and valleys of Wales; and since that time, many thousands have reaped a glorious harvest. … We have nothing of importance to communicate respecting the Welsh Baptists from this period to the year 180 when two ministers by the name of Faganus, and Damicanus, who were born in Wales, but were born again in Rome, and became eminent ministers of the gospel, were sent from Rome to assist their brethren in Wales. In the same year, Lucius, the Welsh king, and the first king in the world who embraced the christian religion, was baptized. … About the year 300, the Welsh Baptists suffered most terrible and bloody persecution, which was the tenth persecution under the reign of Dioclesian. … Here, as well as in many other places, the blood of martyrs proved to be the seed of the church.” Of A.D. 600, Davis says: “Infant baptism was in vogue long before this time in many parts of the world, but not in Brittain. The ordinances of the gospel were then exclusively administered there according to the primitive mode. Baptism by immersion, administered to those who professed repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Welsh people considered the only baptism of the New Testament. That was their unanimous sentiment as a nation, from the time that the christian religion was embraced by them in the year 63, until a considerable time after the year 600. They had no national religion; they had not connected church and State together; for they believed that the kingdom of Christ is not in this world.” Here Davis gives the account quoted in the foregoing, of Augustine’s attempt to convert them to infant baptism and to the Romish church and of the persecution ensuing from his failure to do so. From this persecution Davis says: “The majority of the Welsh people submitted to popery; at that time more out of fear than love. Those good people that did not submit, were almost buried in its smoke; so that one knew but little of them from that time to the Reformation.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 367-369) ii. "We know that the reformers were for mixed communion, but the Olchon Baptists received no such practices. In short, these were plain, strict apostolical Baptists. They would have order and no confusion — the word of God their only rule. The reformers, or reformed Baptists, who had been brought up in the established church, were for laying on of hands on the baptized, but these Baptists whom they found on the mountains of Wales were no advocates of it. … The Olchon Baptists … must have been a separate people, maintaining the order of the New Testament in every generation from the year 63 to the present time.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 370-371)

14. American Baptist Churches (17th - 21st Centuries) A. Rodger Williams is credited with starting the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence in 1638. i. The claims that Williams even started the First Baptist Church of Providence are questionable. a. "Mr. Adlam, one of the highest authorities on this subject, says: “The general opinion of Roger Williams being the founder and pastor of the first Baptist church, is a modern theory; the farther you go back, the less generally it is believed; till coming to the most ancient times, to the men who knew Williams, they are such entire strangers to it, that they never heard that he formed the Baptist church there. The first, and the second and the third, and almost the fourth generation must pass away before men can believe that any others than Wickenden, Brown, etc., were the founders of that church.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 376) b. "S. Adlam, than whom no man has given this subject more investigation, says: “I can see no evidence that Roger Williams, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, established a Baptist church in Providence.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 380) c. "Armitage says: “In view of the fact that Williams remained with the Baptists but three or four months, some have seriously doubted whether he formed a church there after that order at all.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 380) d. "Prof. J.C. C. Clarke says: “If Mr. Williams formed a Baptist church, no clear evidence of such act remains.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 380) ii. If Williams did originate the church in Providence, then it wasn't a true church because Williams was never properly baptized or ordained. a. "Williams, while a Baptist in some points, was not a Baptist in so many others, that he never was a Baptist in an ecclesiastical sense. Instead of any orderly Baptist church recognizing any one as a Baptist, who had let an unbaptized man who was a member of no church, baptize him, and then, he in turn, had baptized his baptizer, and, thus originated a church, it would unhesitatingly refuse him any church fellowship, and disown his acts. Yet this is the history of Roger Williams’ baptism and so called church." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 376-377) iii. Williams didn't remain a "Baptist" for long because he thought that the church had perished from the earth after the Roman Catholic apostasy. a. "Roger Williams only briefly remained a Baptist. After only a few months, he became convinced that the ordinances, having been lost in the Apostasy [when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire], could not be validly restored without a special divine commission. He declared: "There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking."" (Rodger Williams, Wikipedia) b. "Speaking of Williams organizing his society, Vedder says: “Soon after arriving at the conclusion that his baptism by one who had not himself been baptized in an orderly manner, was not valid baptism, he withdrew himself from the church, and for the rest of his life was unconnected with any religious body, calling himself a ‘seeker.’”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 379-380) iv. After Williams withdrew himself from the church, it soon dissolved and came to nothing. a. "Mr. Williams’ organization, soon after its origin, came to nothing.’ Cotton Mather, who was Williams’ contemporary, says: “He turned Seeker and Familist, and the church came to nothing.” Armitage concedes: “What became of Williams’ ‘society’ after he left is not very clear.” Cotton Mather says: “Whereupon his church dissolved themselves;” and Neal that “His church hereupon crumbled to pieces.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 381) b. "Adlam: “That the church which Williams began to collect fell to pieces soon after he left them is what we should expect, and is, as far as I can learn, the uniform declaration of the writers of that day.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 381) c. "As J.R. Graves wrote: “It cannot be shown that any Baptist church sprang from the Williams affair. Nor can it be proved that the baptism of any Baptist minister came from Williams’ hand.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 381) B. There were Baptists in America before 1638 when Williams allegedly founded the church in Providence. i. "Rev. C.E. Barrows says: “We are informed that there were Baptists among the first settlers of Massachusetts Bay,” This statement is made on the authority of Cotton Mather." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 376-377) ii. "Cramp, after confirming the above, adds: “It is observable that Mr. Knollys’ arrival was in the spring of 1638. Roger Williams’ baptism did not take place till the winter of that year.” He was a Particular or Calvinistic Baptist.” Prof. A.C. Lewis, D.D., of the McCormick Theological Seminary, of Chicago, says: “There were Baptists in New England before Roger Williams. Of this Cotton Mather informs us distinctly. … Numbers of them came with the early colonists. … Hansard Knollys was one of their number.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 378) iii. "Prof. Paine, Professor of Church History in Bangor Theological Seminary, says: “There were Baptists in America before Roger Williams.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 378) C. John Clark, a Baptist pastor, started the first Baptist church in America in Newport, RI in 1638. i. "At the same time John Clark, another Baptist minister, was on the ground. Prof. J.C. C. Clarke says: “That Clarke brought with him the doctrine of the English ‘Particular Baptist church,’ is probable from many indications. He was a preacher in Rhode Island in 1638, but was never a preacher except according to the early Baptist practice of eldership. No change of his views is known to have occurred. His doctrinal writings preserved were very clear, and are in accord with the Baptist confessions of faith. The church which he established on Rhode Island was early in correspondence with Mr. Spilsbury’s church in London. Governor Winthrop records that Mr. Clarke was a preacher on the Island in 1638. … In another reference he calls him their minister.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 379) ii. "The inscription on John Clarke’s tombstone reads that: “He, with his associates, came to this Island from Massachusetts, in March, 1638, and on the 24th of the same month obtained a deed thereof from the Indians. He shortly after gathered the church aforesaid and became its pastor.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 391) iii. "Of John Clarke’s church in Newport, Backus says; “Mr. Richard Dingley,” its second pastor “in 1694, left them and went to South Carolina.” Thus, through Dingley, South Carolina inherited baptisms from the John Clarke church. John Comer, another of Clarke’s successors to the Newport pastorate, removed and gathered the first Baptist Church in Rehoboth.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 397) D. The origin of the Delaware Baptists was a Baptist church from Wales that emigrated to America. i. "Morgan Edwards thus gives the origin of Delaware Baptists: “To come to the history of this modern church we must cross the Atlantic and land in Wales, where it had its beginning in the following manner: In the spring of the year 1701, several Baptists, in the communities of Pembroke and Caermarthen, resolved to go to America; and as one of the company, Thomas Griffith, was a minister, they were advised to be constituted into a church; they took the advice; the instrument of their confederation was in being in 1770, … the names of their confederates follow: Thomas Griffith, Griffith Nicholas, Evan Richmond, John Edwards, Elisha Thomas, Enoch Morgan, Richard David, James David, Elizabeth Griffith, Lewis Edmond, Mary John, Mary Thomas, Tennet David, Margaret Mathias and Tennet Morris. These fifteen people may be styled a church emigrant.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 392-393) E. The first Baptist church in Pennsylvania was also of Welsh origin. i. "The first Baptist church in Pennsylvania thus originated: “In 1684 Thomas Dungan removed from Rhode Island. … This Baptist preacher and pioneer was probably accompanied with associates of his own faith. Here he founded a church of his own order, which in the end was shortly absorbed by the next company I shall name.” The next company, absorbing the church first named, was “Welsh emigrants, who settled in Pennepeck, or Lower Dublin, 1686.” This church was made up of regular Baptist members. The first Baptist church in Philadelphia was organized in 1698, of English Baptists, some of whom were of Hansard Knollys’ church “in London.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 393-394) F. Numerous Welsh Baptist pastors emigrated from Wales and started churches in America. i. "Samuel Jones, a Baptist minister of Wales, came to America about 1686, settling in Pennsylvania. John Phillips, a Welsh Baptist minister came to America about 1692. Thomas Griffiths, a Baptist minister of Wales, emigrated to America “in the year 1701, and fifteen of the members of the church in the same vessel.” Morgan Edwards, a Baptist minister of more than usual learning “from Wales” “arrived here May 23rd, 1761, and shortly after became pastor of a Baptist church.” John Thomas, a Baptist minister, came from Wales to America in 1703. David Evans, a Welsh Baptist minister, arrived in America in 1739. Several of the members of the Rehobeth church in Wales “went to America, and formed themselves into a church at a place called Montgomery, Pennsylvania, early in the eighteenth century.” Benjamin Griffiths, a Baptist minister of Wales, became their pastor. Nathaniel Jenkens, also, was a member and pastor of this church. Thomas Davis, a Welsh Baptist minister, left Wales for Long Island, about 1713. Cape May church had its foundation “laid in 1675, when a company of emigrants, from England, arrived in Delaware.” Abel Morgan, a Baptist minister, came from Wales early in the eighteenth century. In 1737, thirty members of a Baptist church in Wales with “their minister, came to Pennsylvania and organized the Welsh Tract church.” “Richard Jones, a native of Wales, arrived in America, and became pastor of the church at Burley, Virginia, in 1727.” Caleb Evans, a Baptist minister of finished education, of Wales, “went to America and settled in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1768.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 398-399)

15. The Regular Baptists (17th - 21st Centuries) A. Both General (Arminian) and Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists came to America from England. B. The General Baptists died off and the Particular Baptist expanded and became known as the Regular Baptists in the early 18th century. C. "Two strains of Baptists emigrated from England to America — the General Baptists and the Particular Baptists. The near extinction of the General Baptists, coupled with the expansion of Particular Baptists, especially through the labors of the Philadelphia Baptist Association (org. 1707), probably gave rise to the Particulars becoming the Regular Baptists." (Regular Baptists, Wikipedia) D. "Initially Baptists were characterized theologically by strong to moderate Calvinism. The dominant continuing tradition in both England and the United States was Particular Baptist, whose confessions of faith -- the London (1688) and the Philadelphia (1742) -- were slightly altered transcriptions of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1648), with a hyper-Calvinist triple covenant being substituted for the double covenant of the Westminster confession." (Baptists, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968 Ed., Vol. 3, p.142)

16. The Primitive and Missionary Baptists (19th - 21st Centuries) A. In the 18th and 19th centuries Baptists in America were called Regular Baptists. B. In the late 1820's, those who became known as the Primitive Baptists withdrew fellowship from those who became known as the Missionary Baptists. i. The main reasons for the split was that the Primitive Baptists opposed foreign missionaries, missionary boards, and Bible colleges, all of which the Missionary Baptists supported. ii. At the time of the split until at least the beginning of the 20th century, the PBs and MBs believed the same doctrine, including the doctrine of Sovereign Grace, as the PBs still do today. iii. Written in 1894 - "As there is no difference in doctrine between what are called Missionary Baptists and what are called Anti-mission [Primitive] Baptists, I notice only that which really divides them — missions, education, support of pastors and other religious enterprises." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 431)

17. The Minneapolis Church (2006 - Present) A. The Minneapolis Church was constituted on October 29th, 2006 by Pastor Ben Mott who was baptized and ordained an elder in a Primitive Baptist church. B. The Minneapolis Church is therefore in the unbroken lineage of the true churches of Christ dating back to the church which Jesus Christ built, of which He said, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Mat 16:18). Amen.

Origins

Baptist historian Bruce Gourley outlines four main views of Baptist origins:

1. the modern scholarly consensus that the movement traces its origin to the 17th century via the English Separatists,
2. the view that it was an outgrowth of the Anabaptist movement of believers baptism begun in 1525 on the European continent,
3. the perpetuity view which assumes that the Baptist faith and practice has existed since the time of Christ, and
4. the successionist view, or "Baptist successionism", which argues that Baptist churches actually existed in an unbroken chain since the time of Christ.

English separatist view

John Smyth is believed to have the first church labeled "Baptist" in Amsterdam in 1609

Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the 1600s, the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations. This view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal. It was a time of considerable political and religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical "truth" had been discovered.

During the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England (Anglicans) separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation. There also were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Church's direction, some chose to stay and try to make constructive changes from within the Anglican Church. They became known as "Puritans" and are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction and became known as the Separatists.

In 1579, Faustus Socinus founded the Unitarians in Poland, which was a tolerant country. The Unitarians taught baptism by immersion. When Poland ceased to be tolerant, they fled to Holland. In Holland, the Unitarians introduced immersion baptism to the Dutch Mennonites.

Historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor. Three years earlier, while a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, he had broken his ties with the Church of England. Reared in the Church of England, he became "Puritan, English Separatist, and then a Baptist Separatist," and ended his days working with the Mennonites. He began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of "great danger." The persecution of religious nonconformists in England led Smyth to go into exile in Amsterdam with fellow Separatists from the congregation he had gathered in Lincolnshire, separate from the established church (Anglican). Smyth and his lay supporter, Thomas Helwys, together with those they led, broke with the other English exiles because Smyth and Helwys were convinced they should be baptized as believers. In 1609 Smyth first baptized himself and then baptized the others.

In 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled "The Character of the Beast," or "The False Constitution of the Church." In it he expressed two propositions: first, infants are not to be baptized; and second, "Antichristians converted are to be admitted into the true Church by baptism." Hence, his conviction was that a scriptural church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith. He rejected the Separatist movement's doctrine of infant baptism (paedobaptism). Shortly thereafter, Smyth left the group, and layman Thomas Helwys took over the leadership, leading the church back to England in 1611. Ultimately, Smyth became committed to believers' baptism as the only biblical baptism. He was convinced on the basis of his interpretation of Scripture that infants would not be damned should they die in infancy.

Smyth, convinced that his self-baptism was invalid, applied with the Mennonites for membership. He died while waiting for membership, and some of his followers became Mennonites. Thomas Helwys and others kept their baptism and their Baptist commitments. The modern Baptist denomination is an outgrowth of Smyth's movement. Baptists rejected the name Anabaptist when they were called that by opponents in derision. McBeth writes that as late as the 18th century, many Baptists referred to themselves as "the Christians commonly—though falsely—called Anabaptists."

Another milestone in the early development of Baptist doctrine was in 1638 with John Spilsbury, a Calvinistic minister who helped to promote the strict practice of believer's baptism by immersion. According to Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, "Spilsbury's cogent arguments for a gathered, disciplined congregation of believers baptized by immersion as constituting the New Testament church gave expression to and built on insights that had emerged within separatism, advanced in the life of John Smyth and the suffering congregation of Thomas Helwys, and matured in Particular Baptists."

Anabaptist influence view

Print from Anglican theologian Daniel Featley's book, "The Dippers Dipt, or, The Anabaptists Duck'd and Plung'd Over Head and Ears, at a Disputation in Southwark", published in 1645.

First Baptist Church on 2nd Street between Cherry & Poplar in Macon, GA, circa 1876.

A minority view is that early-17th-century Baptists were influenced by (but not directly connected to) continental Anabaptists. According to this view, the General Baptists shared similarities with Dutch Waterlander Mennonites (one of many Anabaptist groups) including believer's baptism only, religious liberty, separation of church and state, and Arminian views of salvation, predestination and original sin. Representative writers including A.C. Underwood and William R. Estep. Gourley wrote that among some contemporary Baptist scholars who emphasize the faith of the community over soul liberty, the Anabaptist influence theory is making a comeback.

However, the relations between Baptists and Anabaptists were early strained. In 1624, the then five existing Baptist churches of London issued a condemnation of the Anabaptists. Furthermore, the original group associated with Smyth and popularly believed to be the first Baptists broke with the Waterlander Mennonite Anabaptists after a brief period of association in the Netherlands.

Perpetuity and succession view

Main article: Baptist successionism

Traditional Baptist historians write from the perspective that Baptists had existed since the time of Christ. Proponents of the Baptist successionist or perpetuity view consider the Baptist movement to have existed independently from Roman Catholicism and prior to the Protestant Reformation.

The perpetuity view is often identified with The Trail of Blood, a booklet of five lectures by J.M. Carrol published in 1931. Other Baptist writers who advocate the successionist theory of Baptist origins are John T. Christian, Thomas Crosby, G. H. Orchard, J. M. Cramp, William Cathcart, Adam Taylor and D. B. Ray This view was also held by English Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon as well as Jesse Mercer, the namesake of Mercer University.

In 1898 William Whitsitt was pressured to resign his presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for denying Baptist successionism

Baptist origins in the United Kingdom

See also: English Dissenters

A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity (1612) by Thomas Helwys. For Helwys, religious liberty was a right for everyone, even for those he disagreed with.

In 1612, Thomas Helwys established a Baptist congregation in London, consisting of congregants from Smyth's church. A number of other Baptist churches sprang up, and they became known as the General Baptists. The Particular Baptists were established when a group of Calvinist Separatists adopted believers' Baptism. The Particular Baptists consisted of seven churches by 1644 and had created a confession of faith called the First London Confession of Faith.

Baptist origins in North America

See also: Baptists in the United States and Baptists in Canada

The First Baptist Church in America located in Providence, Rhode Island. Baptists in the U.S. number 50 million people and constitute roughly one-third of American Protestants.

Both Roger Williams and John Clarke, his compatriot and coworker for religious freedom, are variously credited as founding the earliest Baptist church in North America. In 1639, Williams established a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, and Clarke began a Baptist church in Newport, Rhode Island. According to a Baptist historian who has researched the matter extensively, "There is much debate over the centuries as to whether the Providence or Newport church deserved the place of 'first' Baptist congregation in America. Exact records for both congregations are lacking."

The Great Awakening energized the Baptist movement, and the Baptist community experienced spectacular growth. Baptists became the largest Christian community in many southern states, including among the enslaved Black population.

Baptist missionary work in Canada began in the British colony of Nova Scotia (present day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in the 1760s. The first official record of a Baptist church in Canada was that of the Horton Baptist Church (now Wolfville) in Wolfville, Nova Scotia on 29 October 1778. The church was established with the assistance of the New Light evangelist Henry Alline. Many of Alline's followers, after his death, would convert and strengthen the Baptist presence in the Atlantic region. Two major groups of Baptists formed the basis of the churches in the Maritimes. These were referred to as Regular Baptist (Calvinistic in their doctrine) and Free Will Baptists (Arminian in their doctrine).

In May 1845, the Baptist congregations in the United States split over slavery and missions. The Home Mission Society prevented slaveholders from being appointed as missionaries. The split created the Southern Baptist Convention, while the northern congregations formed their own umbrella organization now called the American Baptist Churches USA (ABC-USA). The Methodist Episcopal Church, South had recently separated over the issue of slavery, and southern Presbyterians would do so shortly thereafter.

Baptist origins in Ukraine

See also: Baptists in Ukraine

The Baptist churches in Ukraine were preceded by the German Anabaptist and Mennonite communities, who had been living in the south of Ukraine since the 16th century, and who practiced adult believers baptism. The first Baptist baptism (adult baptism by full immersion) in Ukraine took place in 1864 on the river Inhul in the Yelizavetgrad region (now Kropyvnytskyi region), in a German settlement. In 1867, the first Baptist communities were organized in that area. From there, the Baptist movement spread across the south of Ukraine and then to other regions as well. One of the first Baptist communities was registered in Kyiv in 1907, and in 1908 the First All-Russian Convention of Baptists was held there, as Ukraine was still controlled by the Russian Empire. The All-Russian Union of Baptists was established in the town of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) in Southern Ukraine. At the end of the 19th century, estimates are that there were between 100,000 and 300,000 Baptists in Ukraine. An independent All-Ukrainian Baptist Union of Ukraine was established during the brief period of Ukraine's independence in early 20th-century, and once again after the fall of the Soviet Union, the largest of which is currently known as the Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine.

Baptist affiliations

Many Baptist churches choose to affiliate with organizational groups that provide fellowship without control. The largest such group in the US is the Southern Baptist Convention. There also are a substantial number of smaller cooperative groups. Finally, there are Independent Baptist churches that choose to remain independent of any denomination, organization, or association. It has been suggested that a primary Baptist principle is that local Baptist Churches are independent and self-governing, and if so the term 'Baptist denomination' may be considered somewhat incongruous.

In 1905, Baptists worldwide formed the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). The BWA's goals include caring for the needy, leading in world evangelism and defending human rights and religious freedom.

Membership

Worship service at the Église Francophone CBCO Kintambo in Kinshasa, affiliated to the Baptist Community of Congo, 2019

Finnish Baptist church in Vaajakoski, Jyväskylä

Worship service at Crossway Church in Melbourne, affiliated with Australian Baptist Ministries, 2008

Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Baptist Convention of Hong Kong, 2008

Statistics

See also: List of Christian denominations by number of members and List of Baptist denominations

In 2010, 100 million Christians identify themselves as Baptist or belong to Baptist-type churches. According to a denomination census released in 2020, it has 241 Baptist denominations members in 126 countries, 169,000 churches and 47,000,000 baptized members. In 2020, according to the researcher Sébastien Fath of the CNRS, the movement would have around 170 million believers in the world.

Among the censuses carried out by the Baptist denominations in 2020, those which claimed the most members were on each continent:

In Africa, the Nigerian Baptist Convention with 13,654 churches and 8,000,637 members, the Baptist Convention of Tanzania with 1,300 churches and 2,660,000 members, the Baptist Community of the Congo River with 2,668 churches and 1,760,634 members.

In North America, the Southern Baptist Convention with 47,530 churches and 14,525,579 members, the National Baptist Convention, USA with 21,145 churches and 8,415,100 members.

In South America, the Brazilian Baptist Convention with 9,018 churches and 1,790,227 members, the Evangelical Baptist Convention of Argentina with 670 churches and 85,000 members.

College of Nursing, Central Philippine University, affiliated with the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches, in Iloilo City, 2018

In Asia, the Myanmar Baptist Convention with 5,319 churches and 1,710,441 members, the Nagaland Baptist Church Council with 1,615 churches and 610,825 members, the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches with 2,668 churches and 600,000 members.

In Europe, the All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists with 2,272 churches and 113,000 members, the Baptist Union of Great Britain with 1,895 churches and 111, 208 members, the Union of Evangelical Free Churches in Germany with 801 churches and 80,195 members.

In Oceania, the Baptist Union of Papua New Guinea with 489 churches and 84,000 members, the Australian Baptist Ministries with 1,021 churches and 76,046 members.

Qualification for membership

Membership policies vary due to the autonomy of churches, but the traditional method by which an individual becomes a member of a church is through believer's baptism (which is a public profession of faith in Jesus, followed by water baptism).

Most baptists do not believe that baptism is a requirement for salvation, but rather a public expression of one's inner repentance and faith. Therefore, some churches will admit into membership persons who make a profession without believer's baptism.

In general, Baptist churches do not have a stated age restriction on membership, but believer's baptism requires that an individual be able to freely and earnestly profess their faith. (See Age of Accountability)

Baptist beliefs and principles

Main article: Baptist beliefs

Baptists, like other Christians, are defined by school of thought—some of it common to all orthodox and evangelical groups and a portion of it distinctive to Baptists. Through the years, different Baptist groups have issued confessions of faith—without considering them to be creeds—to express their particular doctrinal distinctions in comparison to other Christians as well as in comparison to other Baptists. Baptist denominations are traditionally seen as belonging to two parties, General Baptists who uphold Arminian theology and Particular Baptists who uphold Reformed theology. During the holiness movement, some General Baptists accepted the teaching of a second work of grace and formed denominations that emphasized this belief, such as the Ohio Valley Association of the Christian Baptist Churches of God and the Holiness Baptist Association. Most Baptists are evangelical in doctrine, but Baptist beliefs can vary due to the congregational governance system that gives autonomy to individual local Baptist churches. Historically, Baptists have played a key role in encouraging religious freedom and separation of church and state.

Believer's baptism of adult by immersion at Northolt Park Baptist Church, in Greater London, Baptist Union of Great Britain, 2015.

Many churches are also affiliated with Baptist Christian denominations and adhere to a common confession of faith and shared bylaws.

Shared doctrines would include beliefs about one God; the virgin birth; miracles; atonement for sins through the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of Jesus; the Trinity; the need for salvation (through belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, his death and resurrection); grace; the Kingdom of God; last things (eschatology) (Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth, the dead will be raised, and Christ will judge everyone in righteousness); and evangelism and missions. Some historically significant Baptist doctrinal documents include the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1742 Philadelphia Baptist Confession, the 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith, the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message, and written church covenants which some individual Baptist churches adopt as a statement of their faith and beliefs.

Most Baptists hold that no church or ecclesiastical organization has inherent authority over a Baptist church. Churches can properly relate to each other under this polity only through voluntary cooperation, never by any sort of coercion. Furthermore, this Baptist polity calls for freedom from governmental control.

Exceptions to this local form of local governance include a few churches that submit to the leadership of a body of elders, as well as the Episcopal Baptists that have an Episcopal system.

Baptists generally believe in the literal Second Coming of Christ. Beliefs among Baptists regarding the "end times" include amillennialism, dispensationalism, and historic premillennialism, with views such as postmillennialism and preterism receiving some support.

Some additional distinctive Baptist principles held by many Baptists:

• The supremacy of the canonical Scriptures as a norm of faith and practice. For something to become a matter of faith and practice, it is not sufficient for it to be merely consistent with and not contrary to scriptural principles. It must be something explicitly ordained through command or example in the Bible. For instance, this is why Baptists do not practice infant baptism—they say the Bible neither commands nor exemplifies infant baptism as a Christian practice. More than any other Baptist principle, this one when applied to infant baptism is said to separate Baptists from other evangelical Christians.
• Baptists believe that faith is a matter between God and the individual (religious freedom). To them it means the advocacy of absolute liberty of conscience.
• Insistence on immersion as the only mode of baptism. Baptists do not believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. Therefore, for Baptists, baptism is an ordinance, not a sacrament, since, in their view, it imparts no saving grace.

Beliefs that vary among Baptists

See also: General Baptists, Bapticostal movement, and Regular Baptists

Church sign indicating that the congregation uses the Authorized King James Version of the Bible of 1611

Since there is no hierarchical authority and each Baptist church is autonomous, there is no official set of Baptist theological beliefs. These differences exist both among associations, and even among churches within the associations.

Some doctrinal issues on which there is widespread difference among Baptists are:

• Eschatology
• Arminianism versus Calvinism (General Baptists uphold Arminian theology while Particular Baptists teach Reformed theology).
• The doctrine of separation from "the world" and whether to associate with those who are "of the world"
• Belief in a second work of grace, i.e. entire sanctification (held by General Baptists in the Holiness tradition)
• Speaking-in-tongues and the operation of other charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit in the charismatic churches
• How the Bible should be interpreted (hermeneutics)
• The extent to which missionary boards should be used to support missionaries
• The extent to which non-members may participate in the Lord's Supper services
• Which translation of Scripture to use (see King-James-Only movement in the English-speaking world)
• Dispensationalism versus Covenant theology
• The role of women in marriage.
• The ordination of women as deacons or pastors.
• Affirmation of LGBT people
• Attitudes to, and involvement in the ecumenical movement.

Worship

Show on the life of Jesus at Igreja da Cidade, affiliated to the Brazilian Baptist Convention, in São José dos Campos, Brazil, 2017

In Baptist churches, worship service is part of the life of the Church and includes praise (Christian music), worship, of prayers to God, a sermon based on Bible, offering, and periodically the Lord's Supper. In many churches, there are services adapted for children, even teenagers. Prayer meetings are also held during the week.

Places of worship

Chumukedima Ao Baptist Church building in Chumukedima, Dimapur, affiliated with the Nagaland Baptist Church Council (India).

The architecture is sober and the latin cross is one of the only spiritual symbols that can usually be seen on the building of a Baptist church and that identifies the place where it belongs.

Education

Baptist churches established elementary and secondary schools, bible colleges, colleges and universities as early as the 1680s in England, before continuing in various countries.

Sexuality

Wedding ceremony at First Baptist Church of Rivas, Baptist Convention of Nicaragua, 2011

In matters of sexuality, several Baptist churches are promoting the virginity pledge to young Baptist Christians, who are invited to engage in a public ceremony at sexual abstinence until Christian marriage. This pact is often symbolized by a purity ring. Programs like True Love Waits, founded in 1993 by the Southern Baptist Convention have been developed to support the commitments.

In some Baptist churches, young adults and unmarried couples are encouraged to marry early in order to live a sexuality according to the will of God. Some books are specialized on the subject, such as the book The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love published in 1976 by Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye and his wife Beverly LaHaye who was a pioneer in the teaching of Christian sexuality as a gift from God and part of a flourishing Christian marriage.

Controversies that have shaped Baptists

Baptists have faced many controversies in their 400-year history, controversies of the level of crises. Baptist historian Walter Shurden says the word "crisis" comes from the Greek word meaning "to decide." Shurden writes that contrary to the presumed negative view of crises, some controversies that reach a crisis level may actually be "positive and highly productive." He claims that even schism, though never ideal, has often produced positive results. In his opinion crises among Baptists each have become decision-moments that shaped their future. Some controversies that have shaped Baptists include the "missions crisis", the "slavery crisis", the "landmark crisis", and the "modernist crisis".

Missions crisis

Early in the 19th century, the rise of the modern missions movement, and the backlash against it, led to widespread and bitter controversy among the American Baptists. During this era, the American Baptists were split between missionary and anti-missionary. A substantial secession of Baptists went into the movement led by Alexander Campbell, to return to a more fundamental church.

Slavery crisis

See also: Christian views on slavery

United States

First Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia where the Southern Baptist Convention was founded

Leading up to the American Civil War, Baptists became embroiled in the controversy over slavery in the United States. Whereas in the First Great Awakening Methodist and Baptist preachers had opposed slavery and urged manumission, over the decades they made more of an accommodation with the institution. They worked with slaveholders in the South to urge a paternalistic institution. Both denominations made direct appeals to slaves and free Blacks for conversion. The Baptists particularly allowed them active roles in congregations. By the mid-19th century, northern Baptists tended to oppose slavery. As tensions increased, in 1844 the Home Mission Society refused to appoint a slaveholder as a missionary who had been proposed by Georgia. It noted that missionaries could not take servants with them, and also that the board did not want to appear to condone slavery.

The Southern Baptist Convention was formed by nine state conventions in 1845. They believed that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves. They believed slavery was a human institution which Baptist teaching could make less harsh. By this time many planters were part of Baptist congregations, and some of the denomination's prominent preachers, such as the Rev. Basil Manly, Sr., president of the University of Alabama, were also planters who owned slaves.

As early as the late 18th century, Black Baptists began to organize separate churches, associations and mission agencies. Blacks set up some independent Baptist congregations in the South before the American Civil War. White Baptist associations maintained some oversight of these churches.

In the postwar years, freedmen quickly left the white congregations and associations, setting up their own churches. In 1866 the Consolidated American Baptist Convention, formed from Black Baptists of the South and West, helped southern associations set up Black state conventions, which they did in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. In 1880 Black state conventions united in the national Foreign Mission Convention, to support Black Baptist missionary work. Two other national Black conventions were formed, and in 1895 they united as the National Baptist Convention. This organization later went through its own changes, spinning off other conventions. It is the largest Black religious organization and the second-largest Baptist organization in the world. Baptists are numerically most dominant in the Southeast. In 2007, the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Survey found that 45% of all African Americans identify with Baptist denominations, with the vast majority of those being within the historically Black tradition.

Caribbean islands

A healthy Church kills error, and tears evil in pieces! Not so very long ago our nation tolerated slavery in our colonies. Philanthropists endeavored to destroy slavery, but when was it utterly abolished? It was when Wilberforce roused the Church of God, and when the Church of God addressed herself to the conflict—then she tore the evil thing to pieces! -- C.H. Spurgeon an outspoken British Baptist opponent of slavery in 'The Best War Cry' (1883)

Elsewhere in the Americas, in the Caribbean in particular, Baptist missionaries and members took an active role in the anti-slavery movement. In Jamaica, for example, William Knibb, a prominent British Baptist missionary, worked toward the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies (which took place in full in 1838). Knibb also supported the creation of "Free Villages" and sought funding from English Baptists to buy land for freedmen to cultivate; the Free Villages were envisioned as rural communities to be centred around a Baptist church where emancipated slaves could farm their own land. Thomas Burchell, missionary minister in Montego Bay, also was active in this movement, gaining funds from Baptists in England to buy land for what became known as Burchell Free Village.

Prior to emancipation, Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe, who served with Burchell, organized a general strike of slaves seeking better conditions. It developed into a major rebellion of as many as 60,000 slaves, which became known as the Christmas Rebellion (when it took place) or the Baptist War. It was put down by government troops within two weeks. During and after the rebellion, an estimated 200 slaves were killed outright, with more than 300 judicially executed later by prosecution in the courts, sometimes for minor offenses.

Baptists were active after emancipation in promoting the education of former slaves; for example, Jamaica's Calabar High School, named after the port of Calabar in Nigeria, was founded by Baptist missionaries. At the same time, during and after slavery, slaves and free Blacks formed their own Spiritual Baptist movements - breakaway spiritual movements which theology often expressed resistance to oppression.

Memory of slavery

Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister and civil rights leader. at the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, D.C. The Civil Rights Movement divided various Baptists in the U.S., as slavery had more than a century earlier.

In the American South, the interpretation of the American Civil War, abolition of slavery and postwar period has differed sharply by race since those years. Americans have often interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War and Reconstruction in white versus Black memory by analyzing Baptist sermons documented in Alabama. Soon after the Civil War, most Black Baptists in the South left the Southern Baptist Convention, reducing its numbers by hundreds of thousands or more. They quickly organized their own congregations and developed their own regional and state associations and, by the end of the 19th century, a national convention.

White preachers in Alabama after Reconstruction expressed the view that:

God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and "traditional" race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.

Black preachers interpreted the Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction as: "God's gift of freedom." They had a gospel of liberation, having long identified with the Book of Exodus from slavery in the Old Testament. They took opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they quickly formed their own churches, associations, and conventions to operate freely without white supervision. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, a place to develop and use leadership, and places for proclamation of the gospel of liberation. As a result, Black preachers said that God would protect and help him and God's people; God would be their rock in a stormy land.

The Southern Baptist Convention supported white supremacy and its results: disenfranchising most Blacks and many poor whites at the turn of the 20th century by raising barriers to voter registration, and passage of racial segregation laws that enforced the system of Jim Crow. Its members largely resisted the civil rights movement in the South, which sought to enforce their constitutional rights for public access and voting; and enforcement of midcentury federal civil rights laws.

On 20 June 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to adopt a resolution renouncing its racist principles and apologizing for its past defense of slavery. More than 20,000 Southern Baptists registered for the meeting in Atlanta. The resolution declared that messengers, as SBC delegates are called, "unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin" and "lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest." It offered an apology to all African Americans for "condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime" and repentance for "racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously." Although Southern Baptists have condemned racism in the past, this was the first time the convention, predominantly white since the Reconstruction era, had specifically addressed the issue of slavery.

The statement sought forgiveness "from our African-American brothers and sisters" and pledged to "eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry." In 1995 about 500,000 members of the 15.6-million-member denomination were African Americans and another 300,000 were ethnic minorities. The resolution marked the denomination's first formal acknowledgment that racism played a role in its founding.

Landmark crisis

Further information: Landmarkism

Southern Baptist Landmarkism sought to reset the ecclesiastical separation which had characterized the old Baptist churches, in an era when inter-denominational union meetings were the order of the day. James Robinson Graves was an influential Baptist of the 19th century and the primary leader of this movement. While some Landmarkers eventually separated from the Southern Baptist Convention, the movement continued to influence the Convention into the 20th and 21st centuries. For instance, in 2005, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board forbade its missionaries to receive alien immersions for baptism.

Modernist crisis

Further information: Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy

Charles Spurgeon later in life.

The rise of theological modernism in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries also greatly affected Baptists. The Landmark movement, already mentioned, has been described as a reaction among Southern Baptists in the United States against incipient modernism . In England, Charles Haddon Spurgeon fought against modernistic views of the Scripture in the Downgrade Controversy and severed his church from the Baptist Union as a result.

The Northern Baptist Convention in the United States had internal conflict over modernism in the early 20th century, ultimately embracing it. Two new conservative associations of congregations that separated from the convention were founded as a result: the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches in 1933 and the Conservative Baptist Association of America in 1947.

Following similar conflicts over modernism, the Southern Baptist Convention adhered to conservative theology as its official position. In the late 20th century, Southern Baptists who disagreed with this direction founded two new groups: the liberal Alliance of Baptists in 1987 and the more moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991. Originally both schisms continued to identify as Southern Baptist, but over time "became permanent new families of Baptists."

In his 1963 book, Strength to Love, Baptist pastor Martin Luther King criticized some Baptist churches for their anti-intellectualism, especially because of the lack of theological training among pastors.

In 2018, Baptist theologian Russell D. Moore criticized some American Baptist churches for their moralism emphasizing strongly the condemnation of certain personal sins, but silent on the social injustices that afflict entire populations, such as racism.

See also

• List of Baptist confessions
• List of Baptist World Alliance National Fellowships
• List of Baptist denominations
• List of Baptists
• English Dissenters

Bibliography

• Beale, David. Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices. Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2018.
• Bumstead, JM (1984), Henry Alline, 1748–1784, Hantsport, NS: Lancelot Press.
• Christian, John T (1926), History of the Baptists, vol. 2, Nashville: Broadman Press.
• Kidd, Thomas S. and Barry Hankins, Baptists in America: A History (2015)
• Leonard, Bill J (2003), Baptist Ways: A History, Judson Press, ISBN 978-0-8170-1231-1, comprehensive international History.
• Torbet, Robert G (1975) [1950], A History of the Baptists, Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, ISBN 978-0-8170-0074-5.
• Wright, Stephen (2004), Early English Baptists 1603–49.

Further reading

• Beale, David. Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices. Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2018.
• Bebbington, David. Baptists through the Centuries: A History of a Global People (Baylor University Press, 2010) emphasis on the United States and Europe; the last two chapters are on the global context.
• Brackney, William H. A Genetic History of Baptist Thought: With Special Reference to Baptists in Britain and North America (Mercer University Press, 2004), focus on confessions of faith, hymns, theologians, and academics.
• Brackney, William H. ed., Historical Dictionary of the Baptists (2nd ed. Scarecrow, 2009).
• Cathcart, William, ed. The Baptist Encyclopedia (2 vols. 1883). online
• Gavins, Raymond. The Perils and Prospects of Southern Black Leadership: Gordon Blaine Hancock, 1884–1970. Duke University Press, 1977.
• Harrison, Paul M. Authority and Power in the Free Church Tradition: A Social Case Study of the American Baptist Convention Princeton University Press, 1959.
• Harvey, Paul. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865–1925 University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
• Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997).
• Isaac, Rhy. "Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 to 1775," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., XXXI (July 1974), 345–68.
• Life & Practice in the Early Church: A Documentary Reader, New York University press, 2001, pp. 5–7, ISBN 978-0-8147-5648-5.
• Kidd, Thomas S., Barry Hankins, Oxford University Press, 2015
• Leonard, Bill J. Baptists in America (Columbia University Press, 2005).
• Menikoff, Aaron (2014). Politics and Piety: Baptist Social Reform in America, 1770-1860. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781630872823.
• Pitts, Walter F. Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Rawlyk, George. Champions of the Truth: Fundamentalism, Modernism, and the Maritime Baptists (1990), Canada.
• Spangler, Jewel L. "Becoming Baptists: Conversion in Colonial and Early National Virginia" Journal of Southern History. Volume: 67. Issue: 2. 2001. pp. 243+
• Stringer, Phil. The Faithful Baptist Witness, Landmark Baptist Press, 1998.
• Underwood, A. C. A History of the English Baptists. London: Kingsgate Press, 1947.
• Whitley, William Thomas A Baptist Bibliography: being a register of the chief materials for Baptist history, whether in manuscript or in print, preserved in Great Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies. 2 vols. London: Kingsgate Press, 1916–22 (reissued) Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1984 ISBN 3487074567
• Wilhite, David E. (2009). "The Baptists "And the Son": The Filioque Clause in Noncreedal Theology". Journal of Ecumenical Studies. 44 (2): 285–302.
• Wills, Gregory A. Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900, Oxford.

Primary sources

• McBeth, H. Leon, ed. A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage (1990), primary sources for Baptist history.
• McKinion, Steven A., ed. Life and Practice in the Early Church: A Documentary Reader (2001)
• McGlothlin, W. J., ed. Baptist Confessions of Faith. Philadelphia: The American Baptist Publication Society, 1911.

External links

• Early Church Fathers on Baptism
• Oxford bibliographies: "Baptists" (2015) by Janet Moore Lindman
• Baptists at Curlie
• Baptist church history collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Indiana State Library