I will be completing a series of blogs on the history of Baptists. This is to complete the requirements for my Church History class. In each church history class we are to complete a PEICH (Plan for Eliminating Ignorance of Church History). This semester, I have decided to complete a series of blogs on the topic of the history of Baptists. I have decided that this is a topic that Baptists themselves know very little about. Therefore, in the following entries I will present historical information and facts. I hope that the blogs are informative as well as fun to read.
In the Beginning…
Bill Tuck said, “Baptists have a rich and wonderful heritage. But I have discovered through listening and reading that many persons in our Baptist churches are unfamiliar with this legacy.”[1] I grew up in a small Baptist church and learned about many missionaries, heard many Bible stories, and listened to many sermons. However, I never learned about the history of the Baptists. I have called myself a Baptist for all these years but I truly never knew what it meant to be Baptist. This is the case for most Baptists. I could ask the oldest member of the church or the youngest, and for the most part, neither would know much about Baptist history.
Sometime in late 1608 or early 1609, a group of English Christians gathered for worship in Amsterdam, Holland. They met in their regular place of worship, which was a bakehouse owned by a wealthy Mennonite. This was not a regular worship service, however. This was the group’s first baptismal service in which each person to be baptized was an adult who had confessed belief in Jesus Christ. No one in this group had experience with believer’s baptism. They had all been baptized as infants in the Church of England. The leader of the group was Mr. John Smyth. He suggested that he baptize himself and then baptize the others. After baptizing himself he baptized the others by pouring water over their heads. And so began the first Baptist church in history.[2]
This small group of Baptists was committed to the belief that church membership should be based on a personal confession of faith followed by believer’s baptism. This was a radical belief since at the time all citizens of England were required to be members of the Church of England and have their baptisms as infants. Since they were refusing to be members of the Church of England and to abide by the interpretations and theology of the Church of England, they were subject to fines, whippings, and imprisonments.[3] Members of this newly formed Baptist church in Amsterdam were English citizens. They did not want to follow the Church of England so the group, along with its leaders John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, fled for Amsterdam.
Little information is known about these earliest Baptists. The exact number who participated in the baptismal service is unknown as well. This much is certain: Smyth and Helwys served as able leaders of the group. Smyth was originally a part of a group of Separatists. When his group was fleeing England, Helwys partially funded their passage to Amsterdam. Eventually, he began to believe the things this group did and joined with his wife. While in Amsterdam, Smyth’s congregation encountered Dutch Mennonites, who advocated religious liberty and baptized believers only.[4] We do not know how much these Mennonites influenced Smyth but we do know that sometime in 1608 or 1609 his religious views shifted once again. After he had been studying the Bible and committing himself to New Testament teachings as closely as possible, Smyth concluded that the true church should be made up of believers who professed their faith publically and then were baptized. Based on this new understanding, Smyth asserted that his Separatist church was not a true church. In 1609 Smyth wrote The Character of the Beast and he not only attacked the practices and teachings of the Church of England and of Separatist churches; he also affirmed his own new commitment to believer’s baptism. All of these new understandings led to the congregation’s baptismal service that was previously explained.
Eventually, Smyth began to question his own self baptism and his beliefs about the true church. He came to believe that he should have allowed the Mennonites to baptize him. He soon repudiated his baptism and asked the other members to do the same. Thirty one members, fourteen men and seventeen women, followed Smyth in renouncing their baptisms, and requested membership in the local Mennonite community. Smyth’s ultimate attempt to join this group failed because he died during the summer of 1612. Eventually the Mennonite group granted membership to the others.[5] However, during this process, Helwys and about ten others of the new Baptist church refused to renounce their baptisms and excommunicated Smyth from the group. Shortly after the break with Smyth, Helwys wrote several documents defending the actions of his group, including a confession of faith. A Declaration of Faith of the English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland was released as their confession of faith. During this time, Helwys began to feel guilty for leaving England in the first place to escape the persecution. In 1612, Helwys, along with his few church members, sailed home to England. This group settled near London and established the first Baptist church on English soil. It continued as it had in Amsterdam to baptize new believers. Shortly after arriving in England, Helwys published A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, which was the first document written in English that called for complete freedom of conscience in matters of religion. Smyth asserted that the king of England had no power to control the religious beliefs of the people.[6]
Smyth ended up being jailed after sending a copy of this document to King James. He remained in jail and died there sometime before 1616. The Baptist faith did not die with him. Other leaders stepped in to lead and despite the opposition of the Church of England and the persecution by the government, the small group of Baptists began to grow and organize new churches. Those who had adopted Helwys’s beliefs came to be identified as General Baptists because of their belief that Christ died for all people and that all who believe in Jesus Christ can be saved. These beliefs reflected those of Jacob Arminius, making the General Baptists “Arminians.” About twenty-five years after the Helwys church returned to England, a new group of Calvinist Baptists called Particular Baptists, organized. This group did not split off from the General Baptists, they emerged separately sometime in the 1630’s. The theology of the Particular Baptists was based on Calvin. From Calvin came the belief that Christ died for a particular group of people-the elect, whom God had chosen or predestined before the foundation of the world. By 1638, these two distinct groups of Baptists existed in England. While both Baptist traditions made their way across the ocean to America, the theology of the Particulars became prominent in England and also became dominant among Baptists in America.[7]
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