BAPTISTS' REFORMATION ROOTS

Exactly 300 years ago, in the fall of 1689, the General Assembly of the Particular Baptists of England published what is arguably the most influential confession of faith in Baptist history. The Second London Confession, as it was called, closely paralleled two prior confessional standards: the Savoy Declaration, put forth by the English Congregationalists in 1658, and the Westminster Confession of 1646, the authoritative creed of English Presbyterians. With minor adaptations, the Second London Confession was adopted by the Philadelphia Baptist Association, which secured the services of Benjamin Franklin to republish it in 1743. It quickly became the dominant confessional standard of Baptists in America.

In the preface to the Second London Confession, the Baptists of 1689 acknowledge the close similarity between their document and other orthodox confessions, even to the point of common wording “in all the fundamental articles of the Christian religion.” Moreover, they declare that they have deliberately pursued this strategy in order "to convince all that we have no itch to clog religion with new words, but to readily acquiesce in that form of sound words which hath been, in consent with the holy scriptures, used by others before us; hereby declaring before God, angels, and men, our hearty agreement with hem, in that wholesome protestant doctrine, which, with so clear evidence of scriptures they have asserted."

In 1928 F.W. Patterson, then president of Acadia University, addressed the Baptist World Alliance which was meeting in Toronto. In the context of resisting calls for Baptists to join with other Protestants in a church merger, Patterson nonetheless spoke warmly of the common linkage which joined Baptists with other heirs of the Reformation. "The things that Baptists have in common with other Protestants are much more important than the things in which they differ from them. If we think of other Protestants in terms of origins, Baptists spring from the same general stock; if we think of them in terms of truth, Baptists confess joyfully that they hold great areas of truth in common; they are nourished by the same Scriptures: they believe in the same God and in His grace; they worship in the same spirit; they recognize equally the fact of sin, the necessity of redemption, the initiative of God in the work of redemption, and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ as the way of God. If we think of them in terms of objectives, our general aim and our major emphasis are the same. We know that Baptists have no monopoly of Christianity and that it is more important that men be christian than that they be Baptist."

While the great majority of Baptist doctrine agrees with that of the other early Protestants, there is one belief that went seriously against the grain in colonial American society: the rejection of infant baptism, replaced with the absolute insistence on believer's baptism. From the 1852 Baptist Almanac:

If we go back to the settlement of this country, it is not explained by ordinary principles. Not one of all the colonies, not even Rhode Island, was originally planted by baptists; as Virginia was by Episcopalians, Maryland by Catholics, Delaware by Lutherans, Pennsylvania by Quakers, New Jersey and New York by Presbyterians, and all New England by Congregationalists. Nor was their original introduction and spread the result of any energetic missionary system, like that of the methodists. No other body of Christians owes so little as the baptists to emigration from Europe. And then they alone have religiously rejected the entrapping policy of infant baptism–on which all other sects rely for the perpetuity of religion. All the more prominent baptists of that period became such after their arrival in the New World. Roger Williams became a baptist, for example, eight years after his arrival, and three years after his banishment from Massachusetts for his views of liberty of conscience, which were truly thought to "tend to Anabaptistry." When he became convinced of the truth of our views in 1639, there was not a baptist minister in the country to administer the ordinance....

It is the glory of our church organization that liberty is one of its inseparable principles. This is the cause why all the despots of the Old World, whether in church or state, never could endure it. The well-known maxim, that "tyrants hate those whom they fear," has found its most prefect illustration in the persecutions suffered by the baptists. For infant baptism, that fundamental error that builds up churches by compulsion–what martyr ever died? But for believer’s baptism–that great law of Jesus Christ, what myriads in all ages have faced the fiery flame?

Few Baptists today realize that thousands of Baptists were murdered in Europe and persecuted viciously in New England for nothing more than not baptizing their babies. The idea here is that there is no such thing as a "grandchild of God" -- having Christian parents or being raised in a church or being baptized shortly after birth or going through confirmation classes may all be good and beneficial, but none of these are sufficient for salvation. Each individual must respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit himself or herself and must be born again. And likewise, no ecclesiastical or governmental body can create a church by fiat. The True Body of Christ is built by Christ alone, and so men must be allowed freedom of conscience. Christianity enforced by the sword can never be real. Also Baptists have traditionally avoided building rigid supercongregational hierarchies. Individual churches band together for fellowship and for missions, but the larger body doesn't tell local bodies what leaders they can choose or how their budgets are spent.

So historically, Baptist theology can be described as the marriage of Biblical literism, Calvinism, denial of infant baptism, and missionary zeal. Baptists embrace Calvin's doctrines of grace -- men and women are lost until God intervenes, and cannot choose the right path without empowerment from Christ -- without setting aside Jesus' command to preach the gospel in every nation.