Baptists. In general, Baptists are evangelical Protestant Christians who hold to the authority of the
Bible, the lordship of Jesus Christ, the independence of local congregations, the necessity of a conversion experience and a believer's baptism by immersion, and evangelism and missionary outreach. Most Baptists are at least mildly Calvinistic, but smaller groups uphold the theologically Arminian (freewill) position. The Baptist movement originated as a sect of dissenters in seventeenth‐century England. The first Baptists emigrated to North America in the 1630s, settling mostly in
New England and by the 1680s in the Middle Colonies. The first congregation was established by Roger
Williams at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1638–1639. Regionally, Baptists held association meetings of churches as early as the 1670s, the most prominent becoming the Philadelphia Baptist Association, formed in 1707. Early Baptists were often severely persecuted by the established denominations.
The eighteenth century was a time of rapid growth for Baptists in America. No other group received more impetus from the First Great Awakening. Baptist churches were formed from Congregationalist churches, and evangelism gave rise to new church throughout the colonies. In 1764, James Manning opened the first Baptist institution of higher learning, the Rhode Island College, which later became Brown University. During the
Revolutionary War period, such prominent Baptist leaders as Isaac Backus of Massachusetts and John Leland of Virginia formulated the principles of
separation of church and state, and through their connections successfully made the case to both national and state constitution writers. As the new nation developed, Baptists conducted overseas and domestic missions through voluntary societies. By 1840, Baptists were numerous in every state and territory, with over twenty educational institutions and missions in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. Beginning in the 1840s, division erupted among Baptists in America. Northern antislavery churches formed a dissenter mission society in 1843; Baptists in the South in 1845 formed the Southern Baptist Convention. Some Baptists opposed mission and benevolence societies altogether. Leading Baptists in the urban North under William Colgate even formed an independent American Bible Union to foster a Baptist version of Scripture. Beginning in 1838, black Baptists established their own associations and later national conventions: German, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian emigrants formed ethnic conventions that would later become separate Baptist denominations.
In the twentieth century, Baptists grew to over 25 million members in the United States. The largest group, the Southern Baptist Convention, maintained associations and conventions in every state and most countries overseas. The National Baptist Convention in the U.S.A., along with the National Baptist Convention of America and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, organized most African American Baptists. The oldest national group, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., formed in 1907, continued the work of the Northern Baptist Convention. The many smaller Baptist bodies included the Primitive Baptists, the Missionary Baptists, and the Freewill Baptists. Theological differences produced several conservative or fundamentalist Baptist bodies of churches, such as the General Association of Regular Baptists (1932), the Conservative Baptist Association (1943), the Baptist Bible Fellowship (1950), and the Liberty Baptist Fellowship (1977). Continuing ethical and theological debate within the Southern Baptist Convention over such matters as women in the ministry, freedom of conscience, ecumenism, scriptural interpretation, and issues of human sexuality produced the Southern Baptist Alliance (1986) and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (1991).
Baptists contributed leaders to various avenues of American life, including four U.S. presidents ( Warren
Harding, Harry S.
Truman, Jimmy
Carter, and Bill
Clinton), Chief Justice Charles Evans
Hughes; the
Social Gospel theologian Walter
Rauschenbush; and the
civil rights leader Martin Luther
King Jr.See also
African American Religion;
Antislavery;
Bill of Rights;
Great Awakening, First and Second;
Missionary Movement;
Protestantism;
Religion;
Revivalism.
Bibliography
Edwin S. Gaustad , Historical Atlas of Religion in America, 1962.
William H. Brackney , The Baptists, 1988.
Kate Penfield, ed., Into a New Day: Exploring a Baptist Journey of Division, Diversity and Dialogue, 1997.
William H. Brackney
