[33] New members, both black and white, were converted chiefly by Baptist preachers who traveled throughout the Southern United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, in the eras of the First and Second Great Awakenings.

[35] Before the American Revolution, Baptist and Methodist evangelicals in the Southern United States promoted the view of the common person's equality before God, which embraced enslaved people and free blacks.

The Baptists intensely monitored each other's moral conduct, watching especially for sexual transgressions, cursing, and excessive drinking; they expelled members who would not reform.

Patrick Henry and James Madison defended Baptist preachers before the American Revolution in cases considered significant in the history of religious freedom.

[41] In 1814, leaders such as Luther Rice helped Baptists unify nationally under what became known informally as the Triennial Convention (because it met every three years) based in Philadelphia.

The Home Mission Society's board refused to appoint him, noting that missionaries were not allowed to take servants with them (so he clearly could not enslave people) and that they would not make a decision that appeared to endorse slavery.

[50] A secondary issue that disturbed the Southerners was the perception that the American Baptist Home Mission Society did not appoint a proportionate number of missionaries to the South.

After the American Civil War, another split occurred when most freedmen set up independent black congregations, regional associations, and state and national conventions.

In the Reconstruction era, missionaries, both black and white, from several northern denominations worked in the South; they quickly attracted tens and hundreds of thousands of new members from among the millions of freedmen.

During the civil rights movement, many Southern Baptist pastors and members of their congregations rejected racial integration and accepted white supremacy, further alienating African Americans.

[67][68] In 1995, the convention voted to adopt a resolution in which it renounced its racist roots and apologized for its past defense of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy.

[74] In the same convention, Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission quickly responded to a pastor who asked why a member should support the right of Muslims living in the U.S. to build mosques.

[89] On February 10, 2019, a joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express found that there had been over 700 victims of sexual abuse by nearly 400 Southern Baptist church leaders,[90][91] pastors, and volunteers over the previous 20 years.

[96][97] The Reverend J. D. Greear, president of the convention and pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, called the move a "defining moment".

[98] On May 22, 2022, Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the organization's executive committee, released a report detailing that church leaders had stonewalled and disparaged clergy sex abuse survivors for nearly two decades.

[88] The report alleged that while the convention had elected a president, J. D. Greear, in 2018 who made addressing sexual abuse a central part of his agenda, nearly all efforts at reform had been met with criticism and dismissal by other organization leaders.

LifeWay Research President Ed Stetzer said, "historically, many Baptists have considered themselves neither Calvinist nor Arminian, but holding a unique theological approach not framed well by either category".

[114] In addition to the BF&M, the denomination has also issued position statements affirming the autonomy of the local church;[7] identifying the Cooperative Program of missions as integral to the denomination;[115] that statements of belief are revisable in light of Scripture, though the Bible is the final word;[116] honoring the indigenous principle in missions without compromising doctrine or its identity for missional opportunities;[117] that laypersons have the same right as ordained ministers to communicate with God, interpret Scripture, and minister in Christ's name;[118] that "At the moment of conception, a new being enters the universe, a human being, a being created in God's image", who as such should be protected regardless of the circumstances of the conception;[119] that God's plan for marriage and sexual intimacy is a lifetime relationship of one man and one woman, rejecting homosexuality; understanding the Bible to forbid any form of extramarital sexual relations;[120] affirming the accountability of each person before God;[121] and that women are not eligible to serve as pastors.

[124] During this era, a majority of Southern Baptists, including a few conservatives within the denomination, supported a moderate expansion of abortion rights, seeing it as a matter of religious liberty, what they saw as a lack of biblical condemnation, and belief in non-intrusive government.

[126][127][128] Southern Baptists' and evangelicals' initial reaction to Roe v. Wade decision was one of support or indifference; they overwhelmingly viewed anti-abortion movements as a sectarian and Catholic concern.

[130] Beginning in the early 1970s, as a reaction to their perceptions of various "women's liberation movements",[131] the church, along with several other historically conservative Baptist groups,[132] began to assert its view of the propriety and primacy of what it deemed "traditional gender roles" as a body.

"[133] In 1998, the convention appended a male leadership understanding of marriage to the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith and Message, with an official amendment: Article XVIII, "The Family".

[142] The crystallization of the church's positions on gender roles and restrictions on women's participation in the pastorate contributed to the decision by members now belonging to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which broke from the convention in 1991.

[106] The BF&M holds to memorialism,[145] the belief that the Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience in which believers commemorate the death of Christ and look forward to his Second Coming.

Offerings are taken, which may be around the middle of the service or at the end (with the increased popularity of electronic financial systems, some churches operate kiosks allowing givers the opportunity to do so online or through a phone app or website link).

[150] A Dallas/Fort Worth church was forced to apologize to a member who attempted to do so for failing to request permission to annul her marriage after her husband admitted to viewing child pornography.

[172] In 2008, former SBC president Frank Page suggested that if current conditions continue, half of all the convention's churches will close their doors permanently by 2030.

[193] Southern Baptist Disaster Relief provides many different types: food, water, child care, communication, showers, laundry, repairs, rebuilding, or other essential tangible items that contribute to the resumption of life following the crisis—and the message of the Gospel.

One historian called the related James Robinson Graves—Robert Boyte Crawford Howell controversy (1858–60) the greatest to affect the denomination before that of the late 20th century involving the fundamentalist-moderate break.

[203] In July 1961, Professor Ralph Elliott at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City published The Message of Genesis, a book rejecting biblical inerrancy.