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Baptist History

Ancient Welsh traditions state that the British Church practised believers' baptism, but all we know with certainty is that she did not baptize according to the Roman custom, and that her bishops refused Augustine's demand for conformity. Bede does not state the nature of their disagreement, and Fabyan's Chronicle, which favours the Welsh tradition, is not an authority. Baptists were branded for heresy at Oxford in 1166, and from that time forward they are heard of at intervals, but solely in connection with their persecution. It is very significant that when Henry VIII. revolted from Rome, he found vast numbers of people eager to go much farther than he wished to go as a reformer, and that his royal proclamation of 1536 was directed chiefly against Anabaptists. In 1537 several Baptists were burned in London. In 1611 a Baptist Church was formed in London, and from this time the continuity of the denomination has been unbroken.

The Baptist Churches date back through the Anabaptists to within a few years of the time of Luther. Anabaptist churches, which refused to recognize infant baptism as valid, were formed in Switzerland as early as 1523, and sprang up later in Holland, Germany, England, whence the modern type came to the United States. Baptist churches use almost without exception the congregational or independent form of government, and hold to the principle of baptism of believers only by immersion. They are divided by national boundaries, and in the United States by differences in doctrine, practice, etc.

The Anabaptist of the 16th century drew a sharp line of distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate, between the Church and the World. He held that civil society consisted, in a large measure, of unregenerate people. He admitted that uuregenerate civil society required man-made laws for its maintenance as well as civil magistrates for the administration of these laws. But he maintained that Christians should not become civil magistrates, since worldly posts of power are not a part of the government of the Church. Obedience was due to human enactments, as well as to the commandments of civil magistrates, only when they are not contrary to the precepts of the Bible. Besides rejecting the exercise of magistracy on the part of Christians, many Anabaptists, likewise, rejected judicial oaths, the bearing of arms, warfare, and capital punishment entirely.

Many non-Baptists thought that the typical Baptist was fanatical and revolutionary, as many of the Anabaptists were. It was true, many Anabaptists were fanatical, wild, lawless, immoral, iconoclastic, destructive, and revolutionary. Yet these formed only a small proportion of the whole party. The vast majority were peaceful people. But, while being neither fanatical nor revolutionary, the typical Baptist was enthusiastic, and even visionary. The Swiss Anabaptists were no fanatics, but surely enthusiasts. Roger Williams, surely, was both an enthusiast and a visionary. Many of the Anabaptists expected that the millenium would be established immediately, that the kingdom of God would be set up by a mighty display of divine power. When the enthusiasm of these visionary chiliasts was fanned into fury, it inevitably led to fanaticism.

As a political force opposed to Episcopalians and Presbyterians, the Baptists were Independents, and many deprecated the formation of a separate denomination, but others held that according to the New Testament model, a church should contain none but baptized believers. In 1644 seven London churches of this order published a Confession of Faith, in which they described themselves as " commonly though falsely called Anabaptist." Since then until the present day Baptists have taken different views on the lawfulness of communion with those whom they regard as unbaptized, and churches of corresponding order have been founded.

Roger Williams, founder of the state of Rhode Island, is said by some to have organized the first Baptist church in America. Williams insisted that civil authorities were not empowered to enforce religious injunctions, calling instead for a full separation of church and state. Roger Williams consistently advocated the principles in which he believed in season and out of season. He went wherever the logic of hie convictions led him without any regard to the consequences. Considerations of expediency had no weight with him. He was often extreme and inconsiderate in the pressing of his convictions. The Anabaptists were the radicals of the Reformation. Roger Williams, surely, was a radical. He was a born critic. As such, he would act as a stimulus in any community in which he might live. Increasingly uncomfortable with established Puritan practices, for a brief time Williams became a Baptist and co-founded North America's first Baptist church in Providence in 1638. By the following year, however, his skepticism for all established churches led Williams to leave the Baptists as well. Milton, the author of "The Paradise Lost", whom Baptist writers claim as a Baptist, was a radical, both in politics and in religion.

The history of the early Baptist churches in New England is one of constant struggle for existence. The Puritan government of Massachusetts was so bitter in its opposition that nearly a century after Roger Williams there were but 8 Baptist churches in that colony. Conditions elsewhere were similar, although farther south there was less persecution. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century it seemed probable that the General, or Arminian, wing would be dominant in New England at least, although in Philadelphia the controversy had resulted in a victory for the Calvinists. With The Great Awakening in 1740, and the labors of Whitefield, two significant changes appeared in Baptist church life. Calvinistic views began to predominate.

With the general emancipation from ecclesiastical rule that followed the Revolutionary war, all disabilities were removed from the Baptists in the different states, and the new Federal Constitution effaced the last vestige of religious inequality. Under the influence of the later preaching of Whitefield, the close of the eighteenth century was marked by a renewal of revival interest, and a new development of the Arminian type of Baptist churches. For some time the Free Baptists, or Freewill Baptists, as they were variously called, drew considerable strength from the regular Baptists, but the latter soon became as strong as ever.