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Apr 28, 2024 · The Particular Baptists stemmed from a non-Separatist church that was established in 1616 by Henry Jacob at Southwark, across the Thames from London. In 1638 a number of its members withdrew under the leadership of John Spilsbury to form the first Particular Baptist Church. Robert Walker: portrait of Oliver Cromwell.
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The existence of reform efforts in the 15th-century church...
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Baptist - History: Some Baptists believe that there has been...
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Baptist - Beliefs, Practices, Salvation: Initially Baptists...
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Baptist origins in the American colonies can be traced to...
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The first official record of a Baptist church in Canada was 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, converted and strengthened the Baptist presence in the Atlantic region.
Apr 11, 2018 · The Baptist church as we know it was not founded until the 17 th Century, and there were two distinct groups that came about simultaneously in England: The General Baptists and the Particular Baptists. Both groups practiced believer’s baptism by immersion, had a congregational form of church government, and came out of the English Separatist ...
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- Growth in England and abroad
- Development in the United States
- Growth outside the United States
Some Baptists believe that there has been an unbroken succession of Baptist churches from the days of John the Baptist and the Apostles of Jesus Christ. Others trace their origin to the Anabaptists, a 16th-century Protestant movement on the European continent. Most scholars, however, agree that Baptists, as an English-speaking denomination, originated within 17th-century Puritanism as an offshoot of Congregationalism.
There were two groups in early Baptist life: the Particular Baptists and the General Baptists. The Particular Baptists adhered to the doctrine of a particular atonement—that Christ died only for an elect—and were strongly Calvinist (following the Reformation teachings of John Calvin) in orientation; the General Baptists held to the doctrine of a general atonement—that Christ died for all people and not only for an elect—and represented the more moderate Calvinism of Jacobus Arminius, a 17th-century Dutch theologian. The two currents were also distinguished by a difference in churchmanship related to their respective points of origin. The General Baptists had emerged from the English Separatists, whereas the Particular Baptists had their roots in non-Separatist independency.
Both the Separatists and the non-Separatists were congregationalist. They shared the same convictions with regard to the nature and government of the church. They believed that church life should be ordered according to the pattern of the New Testament churches, and to them this meant that churches should be self-governing bodies composed of believers only.
They differed, however, in their attitude toward the Church of England. The Separatists contended that the Church of England was a false church and insisted that the break with it must be complete. The non-Separatists, more ecumenical in spirit, sought to maintain some bond of unity among Christians. While they believed that it was necessary to separate themselves from the corruption of parish churches, they also believed that it would be a breach of Christian charity to refuse all forms of communication and fellowship. While many non-Separatists withdrew and established a worship of their own, they would not go so far as to assert that the parish churches were devoid of all marks of a true church.
Some Baptists believe that there has been an unbroken succession of Baptist churches from the days of John the Baptist and the Apostles of Jesus Christ. Others trace their origin to the Anabaptists, a 16th-century Protestant movement on the European continent. Most scholars, however, agree that Baptists, as an English-speaking denomination, originated within 17th-century Puritanism as an offshoot of Congregationalism.
There were two groups in early Baptist life: the Particular Baptists and the General Baptists. The Particular Baptists adhered to the doctrine of a particular atonement—that Christ died only for an elect—and were strongly Calvinist (following the Reformation teachings of John Calvin) in orientation; the General Baptists held to the doctrine of a general atonement—that Christ died for all people and not only for an elect—and represented the more moderate Calvinism of Jacobus Arminius, a 17th-century Dutch theologian. The two currents were also distinguished by a difference in churchmanship related to their respective points of origin. The General Baptists had emerged from the English Separatists, whereas the Particular Baptists had their roots in non-Separatist independency.
Both the Separatists and the non-Separatists were congregationalist. They shared the same convictions with regard to the nature and government of the church. They believed that church life should be ordered according to the pattern of the New Testament churches, and to them this meant that churches should be self-governing bodies composed of believers only.
They differed, however, in their attitude toward the Church of England. The Separatists contended that the Church of England was a false church and insisted that the break with it must be complete. The non-Separatists, more ecumenical in spirit, sought to maintain some bond of unity among Christians. While they believed that it was necessary to separate themselves from the corruption of parish churches, they also believed that it would be a breach of Christian charity to refuse all forms of communication and fellowship. While many non-Separatists withdrew and established a worship of their own, they would not go so far as to assert that the parish churches were devoid of all marks of a true church.
Although the Particular Baptists were to represent the major continuing Baptist tradition, the General Baptists were first to appear. In 1608 religious persecution induced a group of Lincolnshire Separatists to seek asylum in Holland. A contingent settled in Amsterdam with John Smyth (or Smith), a Cambridge graduate, as their minister; another group moved to Leiden under the leadership of John Robinson. When the question of baptism arose during a debate on the meaning of church membership, Smyth concluded that, if the Separatist contention that “churches of the apostolic constitution consisted of saints only” was correct, then baptism should be restricted to believers only. This, he contended, was the practice of the New Testament churches, for he could find no scriptural support for baptizing infants. Smyth published his views in The Character of the Beast (1609) and in the same year proceeded to baptize first himself and then 36 others, who joined him in forming a Baptist church. Shortly thereafter Smyth became aware of a Mennonite (Anabaptist) community in Amsterdam and began to question his act of baptizing himself. This could be justified, he concluded, only if there was no true church from which a valid baptism could be obtained. After some investigation Smyth recommended union with them. This was resisted by Thomas Helwys and other members of the group, who returned to England in 1611 or 1612 and established a Baptist church in London. The parent group in Amsterdam soon disappeared.
The Particular Baptists stemmed from a non-Separatist church that was established in 1616 by Henry Jacob at Southwark, across the Thames from London. In 1638 a number of its members withdrew under the leadership of John Spilsbury to form the first Particular Baptist Church.
The two decades from 1640 to 1660 constituted the great period of early Baptist growth. Baptist preachers won many adherents around the campfires of the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell’s army. The greatest gains were made by the Particular Baptists, while the General Baptists suffered defections to the Quakers. After the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 both groups were subjected to severe disabilities until these were somewhat relaxed by the Act of Toleration of 1689.
During the following decades the vitality of the General Baptists was drained by the inroads of skepticism, and their churches generally dwindled and died or became Unitarian. The Particular Baptists retreated into a defensive, rigid hyper-Calvinism. Among the Particular Baptists in England renewal came as a result of the influence of the Evangelical Revival, with a new surge of growth initiated by the activity of the English Baptist clergymen Andrew Fuller, Robert Hall, and William Carey. Carey, in 1792, formed the English Baptist Missionary Society—the beginning of the modern foreign missionary movement in the English-speaking world—and became its first missionary to India. A New Connection General Baptist group, Wesleyan in theology, was formed in 1770, and a century later, in 1891, it united with the Particular Baptists to form the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland.
By the end of the 19th century Baptists, together with the other Nonconformist churches, were reaching the peak of their influence in Great Britain, numbering among their preachers several men with international reputations. Baptist influence was closely tied to the fortunes of the Liberal Party, of which the Baptist David Lloyd George was a conspicuous leader. After World War I English Baptists began to decline in influence and numbers.
Baptist churches were established in Australia (1831) and New Zealand (1854) by missionaries of the English Baptist Missionary Society. In Canada, Baptist beginnings date from the activity of Ebenezer Moulton, a Baptist immigrant from Massachusetts who organized a church in Nova Scotia in 1763. In Ontario the earliest Baptist churches were formed by loyalists who crossed the border after the American Revolution, while other churches were established by immigrant Baptists from Scotland and by missionaries from Vermont and New York.
Baptist churches in the English colonies of North America were largely indigenous in origin, being the product of the leftward movement that was occurring among the colonial Puritans at the same time as it was in England. While some emigrants went to the New World as Baptists, it was more typical for them to adopt Baptist views after their arrival ...
While Baptists were troubled by divisive tendencies during the 20th century, there was also a tendency toward greater unity and cohesiveness through the Baptist World Alliance. The 19th century was a period of great Baptist missionary activity. The endeavour in Asia was led by William Carey in India, Adoniram Judson in Burma, and Timothy Richard and Lottie (Charlotte) Moon in China. The initial Baptist presence in Africa began in 1793 when David George, a former slave from South Carolina, reached Sierra Leone by way of Halifax, Nova Scotia. More organized activity was initiated in 1819 by Black Baptists of Richmond, Virginia, who sent Lott Cary to Sierra Leone in 1821 and then shifted his base of operations to Liberia in 1824. By the late 20th century there were major concentrations of Baptists in Congo (Kinshasa), Nigeria, and Cameroon. Of later origin is the Baptist community in Latin America.
The pioneer Baptist in Europe was Johann Gerhardt Oncken, who organized a church at Hamburg in 1834. Oncken had become acquainted with Barnas Sears of Colgate Theological Seminary, who was studying in Germany, and with six others he was baptized by Sears. From this centre, evangelistic activity was extended throughout Germany, and missions were established elsewhere in eastern Europe. Baptist activity was initiated independently in France, Italy, and Spain. Swedish Baptist beginnings date from the conversion of Gustaf W. Schroeder, a sailor baptized in New York in 1844, and Frederick O. Nilsson, also a sailor, who was baptized by Oncken in 1847.
The expansion of the Baptist community in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe led to the formation of the Baptist World Alliance in London in 1905. The purpose of the alliance is to provide mutual encouragement, exchange of information, coordination of activities, and consciousness of the larger Baptist fellowship.
The most notable growth occurred in Russia, where a Russian Baptist Union was formed in 1884 as the result of influences stemming from Oncken. Another Baptist body, the Union of Evangelical Christians, was organized in 1908 by a Russian who had come under the influence of English Baptists. Persecution of Baptists, which had been severe, was relaxed in 1905, and within the remaining disabilities a moderate growth occurred. The Revolution of 1917, with its proclamation of liberty of conscience, marked the beginning of a period of astonishing advance: by 1927 the Russian Baptist Union numbered some 500,000 adherents, while the Union of Evangelical Christians embraced more than 4,000,000. The Soviet constitution of 1929 subjected them to pressure once again, however. Membership in the two groups, which combined in 1944 to form the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians–Baptists in the U.S.S.R., declined sharply, but an estimated membership of more than 500,000 in the 1980s testified to the tenacity with which these believers held their faith.
Jul 7, 2023 · The Baptist denomination is one of the largest Protestant Christian denominations in the world, with a rich history and distinctive beliefs. This comprehensive overview will delve into the origins of the Baptist movement, tracing its development through significant events and key figures. Additionally, it will explore the core theological beliefs that have shaped the Baptist
Oct 26, 2022 · Baptists say that millions of people around the world have not heard of Jesus and evangelism is the mission of sharing Christ’s message. Evangelism has a long history in the Baptist church. According to the American Baptist Churches USA, historians used books, tracts, and other resources in evangelism as early as 1824.
Feb 13, 2023 · The question of the origins of the Christian tradition called Baptist has been, and to some extent still is, a much-debated issue. For example, when W.H. Whitsitt (1841–1911), the third president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argued in the late 1890s that the earliest Baptists in both England and America did not practice immersion, he set in motion a controversy within the ...
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