Baptists

Sources

Origins. Roger Williams and his fellow refugees from Puritan Massachusetts formed what is generally called the first Baptist church in America in 1639. They baptized each other by immersion after each had undergone a conversion experience. They came by their belief in adult baptism and separation of church and state on their own and were not influenced by the English and Welsh Baptists that had emerged from the English Reformation.

Variations. General Baptists, who believed in free will, emigrated from England, as did Particular Baptists from Wales, who believed in predestination. Some Puritan congregations came to believe in adult baptism and proclaimed themselves as Baptists. General (or Six Principles) Baptists were strongest in Rhode Island and formed a Rhode Island Yearly Meeting in early 1700 to serve as an advisory body to those churches. In 1701 the Particular Baptists formed the Philadelphia Baptist Association, which consisted primarily of Welsh Baptists in the area. They worked closely with the Presbyterians, whose beliefs on predestination and an educated clergy comported with their own. The Philadelphia Baptist Association soon attracted other newly organized churches in Virginia and North Carolina, many of which were composed of General Baptists from England, who modified their practices and beliefs to better conform to the Association. Later they changed their name to Regular

Baptists to distinguish themselves from the evangelical Baptists spawned by the Great Awakening.

Great Awakening. Baptist congregations remained small and weak until the Great Awakening when conversion came to be viewed as the decisive Christian experience, leading many to reject the baptism of infants too young to have undergone conversion. The revivalists also protested against an educated ministry and a tax-supported clergy, which hit a responsive cord in New England, Virginia, and other areas with established churches. In New England, New Light members separated from their congregations and formed voluntary churches which entered into the Baptist fold, where they could continue their emphasis on revivalism. The most influential leader in this region was Isaac Backus, who was converted in 1741 and launched a half-century of service as a pastor, evangelist, and historian in the cause of Baptists and religious freedom. These efforts bore fruit throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as itinerant evangelicals spread their message southward.

Sources

Jon Butler, Power, Authority, and the Origins of American Denominational Order: The English Churches in the Delaware Valley, 1680–1730 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978);

Robert G. Horbert, A History of the Baptists (Philadelphia: Judson, 1950);

Norman H. Maring, Baptists in New Jersey: A Study in Transition (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 1964);

William McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630–1833: The Baptists and Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).