Baptists
[4] 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.
[23] Another milestone in the early development of Baptist doctrine was in 1638 with John Spilsbury, a Calvinist minister who helped to promote the strict practice of believer's baptism by immersion (as opposed to affusion or aspersion).
[7] 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.
Gourley writes that among some contemporary Baptist scholars who emphasize the faith of the community over soul liberty, the Anabaptist influence theory is making a comeback.
[49][50][51][52] This cooperative relationship allows the development of common organizations, for mission and societal purposes, such as humanitarian aid, schools, theological institutes and hospitals.
[54][55][56] The BWA's goals include caring for the needy, leading in world evangelism and defending human rights and religious freedom.
[6] 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.
[64] According to a census released in 2024, the BWA includes 266 participating fellowships in 134 countries, with 178,000 churches and 51 million baptized members.
[75] Historically, Baptists have played a key role in encouraging religious freedom and the doctrine of separation of church and state.
[78] Beliefs among Baptists regarding the "end times" include amillennialism, both dispensational and historic premillennialism, with views such as postmillennialism and preterism receiving some support.
Some doctrinal issues on which there is widespread difference among Baptists are: Excommunication may be used as a last resort by some denominations and churches for members who do not want to repent of beliefs or behavior at odds with the confession of faith of the community.
[93] The architecture is generally 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.
[102] Some Baptist associations do not have official beliefs about marriage in a confession of faith and invoke congregationalism to leave the choice to each church 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."
[110] 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.
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.
As early as the late 18th century, Black Baptists began to organize separate churches, associations and mission agencies.
[117] 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.
[118] In the American South, the interpretation of the Civil War, abolition of slavery and postwar period has differed sharply by race since those years.
Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War and Reconstruction in White versus Black memory by analyzing Baptist sermons documented in Alabama.
[119] 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.
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.
[122] In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that recognized the failure of their ancestors to protect the civil rights of African Americans.
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."
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."
Prior to emancipation, Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe, who served with Burchell, organized a general strike of slaves seeking better conditions.
[131] In England, Charles Spurgeon fought against modernistic views of the Scripture in the Downgrade Controversy and severed his church from the Baptist Union as a result.
[132][133][134] The Northern Baptist Convention in the United States had internal conflict over modernism in the early 20th century, ultimately embracing it.
[135] Following similar conflicts over modernism, the Southern Baptist Convention adhered to conservative theology as its official position.
