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Baptists are those Christians belonging to local churches mainly distinguished by baptising professing believers only. A Baptist church generally consists of a gathered group of believers that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and that it should be done by complete immersion (as opposed to affusion or sprinkling). Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency (liberty), salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, pastors and deacons, and two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's supper (also called, communion). Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity.[1]


Historians trace the earliest church labeled "Baptist" back to 1609 in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor.[3] In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults.[4] 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.[5] 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 persecution of English dissenters under King 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 US. [6] Baptist missionaries have spread their faith to every continent.[4]

The largest Baptist denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 15 million.[6] Many other Baptists cooperate through the Baptist World Alliance.



English separatist view[edit]

John Smyth founded the first Baptist church in 1609 in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic

Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the 1600s, the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations,[7] this view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted.[8] Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal,[3] 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.[9][page needed][10]

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.[2][11] 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.[3]

Historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor.[3] 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,[12] he began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of "great danger."[13] 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.[11][14]

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."[15] 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).[16][17] Shortly thereafter, Smyth left the group, and layman Thomas Helwys took over the leadership, leading the church back to England in 1611.[3] 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.[18]

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,[18] the modern Baptist denomination is an outgrowth of Smyth's movement.[11] 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."[19]


Anabaptist influence view[edit]



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.[21]

Perpetuity and succession view[edit]

Prior to the 20th century, some Baptist historians wrote from the perspective that Baptists had existed since the time of Christ.[22] However, the Southern Baptist Convention passed resolutions rejecting this view in 1859. 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.[23]

The perpetuity view is often identified with The Trail of Blood, a booklet of five lectures by J.M. Carrol published in 1931.[23] 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[23][24] This view was also held by English Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon[25] as well as Jesse Mercer, the namesake of Mercer University.[26][original research?]

Baptist origins in the United Kingdom[edit]



Baptist origins in North America[edit]

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;[29] 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."[7][30]


Baptist missionary work in Canada began in the British colony of Nova Scotia (present day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in the 1760s,[31] 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.[32] 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.[33][page needed][34][35] 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.[34]

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.[36] 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.[37]

Baptist affiliations[edit]

Many Baptist churches choose to affiliate with organizational groups that provide fellowship without control,[4] the largest such group 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 autonomous and independent of any denomination, organization, or association,[38] it has been suggested that a primary Baptist principle is that local Baptist Churches are independent and self-governing,[39] and if so the term 'Baptist denomination' may be considered somewhat incongruous.

In 1925, Baptists worldwide formed the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), the BWA now counts 218 Baptist conventions and unions worldwide with over 41 million members.[40] The BWA's goals include caring for the needy, leading in world evangelism and defending human rights and religious freedom. Though it played a role in the founding of the BWA, the Southern Baptist Convention severed its affiliation with BWA in 2004.[41]


The First Baptist Church in America. Baptists constitute roughly one-third of U.S. Protestants.[42]


Today, more than 100 million Christians identify themselves as Baptist or belong to Baptist-type churches. There are 36 million Baptists who belong to churches cooperating with the Baptist World Alliance. Many Baptist groups, including the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist Bible Fellowship do not cooperate with the Alliance.[43]

Baptists are present in almost all continents in large denominations, the largest number by baptized memberships are in Nigeria (3.5 million) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (2 million) in Africa, India (2.5 million) and Myanmar (1 million) in Asia, the United States (35 million) and Brazil (1.8 million) in the Americas.[44]

According to the Barna Group researchers, Baptists are the largest denominational grouping of born again Christians in the USA.[45] A 2009 ABCNEWS/Beliefnet phone poll of 1,022 adults suggests that fifteen percent of Americans identify themselves as Baptists.[46]


Qualification for membership[edit]


Most baptists do not believe that baptism is a requirement for salvation, but rather a public expression of one's inner repentance and faith.[7] Therefore, some churches will admit into membership persons who make a profession without believer's baptism.[49]

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.[50] (See Age of Accountability)

Baptist beliefs and principles[edit]

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.[51] 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.[52] 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.[1] Historically, Baptists have played a key role in encouraging religious freedom and separation of church and state.[53]





Some additional distinctive Baptist principles held by many Baptists:[55]:2


Beliefs that vary among Baptists[edit]

Since there is no hierarchical authority and each Baptist church is autonomous, there is no official set of Baptist theological beliefs,[56] these differences exist both among associations, and even among churches within the associations.


Controversies that have shaped Baptists[edit]


Missions crisis[edit]

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,[61] 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.[62]

Slavery crisis[edit]

United States[edit]

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.Citation Needed



In the postwar years, freedmen quickly left the white congregations and associations, setting up their own churches in order to be free of white supervision;[63] 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.[64] Baptists are numerically most dominant in the Southeast;[65] 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.[66]

Caribbean islands[edit]



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.


Memory of slavery[edit]

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.

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. Like other peoples, 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, it should be noted that, 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.Citation Needed 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.Citation Needed

White preachers in Alabama after Reconstruction expressed the view that:



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.Citation Needed 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.Citation Needed

On 20 June 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to adopt a resolution renouncing its racist roots 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.


Landmark crisis[edit]

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.[71] James Robinson Graves was an influential Baptist of the 19th century and the primary leader of this movement.[72] While some Landmarkers eventually separated from the Southern Baptist Convention, the movement continued to influence the Convention into the 20th and 21st centuries,[73] for instance, in 2005, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board forbade its missionaries to receive alien immersions for baptism.[74]

Modernist crisis[edit]

Charles Spurgeon later in life.

The rise of theological modernism in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries also greatly affected Baptists,[75] the Landmark movement, already mentioned, has been described as a reaction among Southern Baptists in the United States against incipient modernism .[76] 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.[77][78][79]

The Northern Baptist Convention in the United States had internal conflict over modernism in the early 20th century, ultimately embracing it.[80] 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.[80]

Following similar conflicts over modernism, the Southern Baptist Convention adhered to conservative theology as its official position.[81][82] In the late 20th century, moderate Southern Baptists who disagreed with this direction founded two new groups: the Alliance of Baptists in 1987 and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991.[83][84][85][86] Members of both groups originally continued to identify as Southern Baptist, but over time the groups "became permanent new families of Baptists."[83]

See also[edit]


  6. ^ a b "Baptist." 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  9. ^ Leonard 2003.
  12. ^ Leonard 2003, p. 23.
  15. ^ Leonard 2003, p. 24.
  16. ^ Nettles, Tom J. (Spring 2009). "Once Upon a Time, Four Hundred Years Ago.." Founders Journal. Founders Ministries. 76: 2–8. 
  18. ^ a b Leonard 2003, p. 25.
  22. ^ Torbet 1975, pp. 18–9.
  24. ^ Torbet 1975, p. 18.
  25. ^ The New park Street Pulpit, VII, p. 225 .
  27. ^ Wright 2004.
  31. ^ Bumstead 1984, p. 40.
  32. ^ Bumstead 1984, p. 62.
  33. ^ Bumstead 1984.
  40. ^ "Statistics". Baptist World Alliance. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  43. ^ Template:Citewed
  61. ^ Christian 1926, pp. 404–20.
  62. ^ Christian 1926, pp. 421–36.
  64. ^ Fitts (1985)
  66. ^ "A Religious Portrait of African-Americans". Pew forum. 
  74. ^ "Guideline on Baptism". International Mission Board. 
  75. ^ Torbet 1975, pp. 424–45.
  77. ^ Torbet 1975, p. 114.
  78. ^ Spurgeon, Charles (2009). The "Down Grade" Controversy. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. p. 264. ISBN 1561862118. Archived from the original on 23 June 2014. 
  80. ^ a b Torbet 1975, pp. 395, 436.
  86. ^ "CBF History". Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Retrieved 16 January 2010. 



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