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| Organization
and Churches Baptist churches are congregational in matters of government. Such general associations as are formed do not have control over the individual churches. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest body of churches, with about 16 million members. The original national organization of black Baptist churches is the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A.; it has about 8.2 million members (1992). Other large Baptist churches in the United States include the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A, the largely black National Baptist Convention of America (separated from the National Baptist Convention), and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. The Baptist World Alliance was formed in 1905 as an alliance of Baptist churches from around the world. Today the convention includes more than 210 unions and conventions with a combined membership of some 110 million (1999). The conservative Southern Baptist Convention withdrew from the Alliance in 2004, accusing it of being too liberal and increasingly anti-American, charges strongly denied by the Alliance and other American churches belonging to it. History of the Baptist Churches In Holland a group of English separatists, led by John Smyth, came under Mennonite influence and formed c.1608 in Amsterdam the first English Baptist congregation. Smyth baptized first himself, then the others. In 1611 certain members of this congregation returned to London and established a church there. This was the first of the churches afterward known as General Baptists, since they held the Arminian belief that the atonement of Jesus is not limited to the elect only but is general. In 1633 the Particular Baptists were founded. They were a group whose Calvinistic doctrine taught that atonement is particular or individual. Immersion was not yet insisted upon in these churches, but in 1644 seven Particular Baptist churches issued a confession of faith requiring that form of baptism, and Baptist was thenceforth the name given to those who practiced it. In 1891, General and Particular Baptists united into a single body called the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland. |
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| In America it was Baptists of the Particular
type that first gained influence among the Puritans and Calvinists,
when Roger Williams and his companions in Rhode Island rejected
infant baptism and established a church in 1639 based on the individual
profession of faith. Baptists were later persecuted in New England
for opposing infant baptism, and one group emigrated c.1684 from
Maine to Charleston, S.C. A group of Separate Congregationalists
from New England under Shubael Stearns and Daniel Marshall established
(1755) the Separate Baptists in Sandy Creek, N.C. Calvary |