Historical Baptist Faith

Different strains of Baptists and their relationship to Protestants


by Gary W. Long

The Lord Jesus has had a church since He tabernacled among men. This Church is made up of individual congregations of believers living in accordance with the revealed Word of God. At times these churches have successfully prevailed against the gates of hell and at other times have endured purging, and some have had their candle removed, when sin and unrepentance prevailed.

There has never been a time when His faithful congregations have not been without His presence and authority. Thus He has never left Himself without witness in these congregations.

My purpose today is not to try and prove or disprove whether that New Testament institution that Jesus started 2000 years ago, was a Baptist Church, or would eventually become Baptist churches or had anything whatsoever to do with todays Baptists. Whether there is a viable link between Baptists today and that first congregation...whether by baptism, character, commission, principles, polity, practice or faithfulness, I leave for others to prove.

I have been asked to deal with different strains of Baptists and how they relate to Protestants. So, I must leave the first fifteen centuries somewhat alone and move to where we find those clearly identifying themselves as 'Baptists' - and so we start in the early 17th century. The Ana-Baptists and non conformist churches that suffered under Rome for centuries prior to the 1600's cannot and must not be ignored. There is, without question, a succession of shed blood and martyr deaths long before and after Luther nailed his challenge on the door of the church at Wittenburg.

Before looking at the Baptist Faith, and special consideration of the Particular Baptists, I want to share an excellent thought from Alexander Campbell, while still a Baptist...though apostate. He captures what it is to be a Baptist in his debate with Walker in 1820:

"It must be acknowledged that each sect is distinguished by some peculiarity which is generally expressed in the name of it. The history of a sect is the history of a people adhering to one general system of peculiarities, which distinguishes them from all others. The date of the origin of a sect must, then, be the date of the origin of its grand peculiarities. Were we to adopt any other method we should be obliged to describe sects by that which is not peculiar to them, which would be impossible, for all sects would then be alike. The grand peculiarity, from which the Baptists have found their name, is found in the Scriptures as a part of Christianity, and is simply this - To require faith or repentance, as previous to Baptism; and to immerse the subject professing faith and repentance in water, in the name, or into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

This is the peculiarity from which Baptists have their name; all that believe and practice in this way, are Baptists; and all that do not are not Baptists."

In the early 1600's two distinct Baptist groups emerged in England. The first were the General Baptists and within twenty years, the Particular Baptists were on the scene. The terms General and Particular immediately identified their doctrinal differences. General Baptists believed in a 'General' (or universal) atonement and were thus Arminian. The Particular Baptists held to a Particular Redemption and atonement and were Calvinistic. All Baptist historians are in agreement on this distinction in England in this time period.

These two doctrinally opposite Baptist groups in England, were at times, encouraged by some to merge to gain respectability and influence, but were never successful...until they came to America and eventually blend into a huge religious monster, without heart or face but retained the Baptist name and distinctive.

In England, the General Baptists had the earlier start, but were overshadowed by the Particular Baptist's determination and adherence to truth, so that the General Baptists lost many, such as Benjamin Keach, who crossed over from General to Particular. Other General Baptists were lost to Universalism and Arianism. There is one area that both groups held in common, beside their Baptist ecclesiology, and that is the holiness of the believer to be essential. This is the heart of a consistent Arminianism (though, we know, from a wrong motive) as well as from a strong Calvinistic Baptist position. Both groups believed that a Christian was to be Christian!

As we follow these two groups to America, we see the Calvinistic Baptists taking the lead in growth, influence and faithfulness.

It is at this point that I leave off looking at the General Baptists, although credit is due them for remaining consistent to their original beliefs and for, in the main, having influenced the Particular Baptists out of being 'Particular' and thus becoming primarily 'General' Baptists. Today, we still have General Baptists and their sister Free Will Baptists, who proclaim the same Arminianism that was believed even back to early England. Consistent they have been, both in their error and longevity.

So blessed were the American Particular Baptists, that in 1707 some in and around Philadelphia organized into an association. The Philadelphia Baptist Association was the first Baptist Association in America and it adopted the Calvinistic 1689 Baptist Confession from London with two additions, the laying on of hands and the singing of Psalms, and became the Philadelphia Baptist Confession of Faith in 1742.

A few years later, other associations followed from both the New England area and the South. These early associations were thorough going Calvinistic and by today's muddled thinking would be termed Hyper Calvinist, a loose term bandied about by motive driven theologians and historians.

A Congregationalist couple left America in 1812 as the first foreign missionaries from this country and arrived in India to immediately become Baptists. It was not the great waters of the Atlantic that convinced Adoniram Judson, but a determined study he had made while on board ship, preparing a defense for those Serempore Baptists he knew were ahead. In his studies, he found nothing in the New Testament to justify his practice of sprinkling water on infants, and so with no Serempore influence, Adnoniram and Ann Judson were baptized by William Ward on October 6, 1812. A short time later their friend, Luther Rice was convinced of the Baptist position and was also baptized, thus American Baptists had ready made missionaries in these former Congregationalists.

The early 1800's bring us to our first major division among Particular Baptists and it is over these missionaries and missionary societies. A strong anti-mission movement begins, and is still carried on in our day by the Primitive Baptists. Many churches and even a few small associations, go over to anti-missionism but the vast majority see the movement as not only divinely ordained but providentially blessed.

The 1830's also see Baptist ranks affected by the Alexander Campbell - Barton Stone Restoration Movement.

By 1840 a cultural division is in the making. The institution of slavery has been abolished in England and her Colonies, while in America, the merchandizing of humans as property is necessitated by the demand of cotton. The slavery issue is dealt with primarily on the basis of emotion and 19th century reasoning, so that in 1845 at the Triennial Baptist Convention, a major eruption over the slavery issue ensues and two prominent leaders from the south walk out of the convention, to establish the Southern Baptist Convention.

Missions in the 1820's, Campbellism in the 1830's and now slavery in the 1840's. The Baptists of the north will eventually become known as the Northern Baptist Convention and later as the American Baptist Convention and have had a long tendency to intellectual liberalism. These Northern Baptists will suffer a major split in 1932 when the General Association of Regular Baptists is formed, in opposition to modernism. Conservative Baptists, who were not as militant as the GARB, tried to stay in the Northern Baptist Convention and work for reform but were unsuccessful and so in 1947 they also separated and formed the Conservative Baptist Association.

In the South, the Southern Baptist Convention remains conservative and growing but J. Frank Norris separates from Southern Baptists in Texas in the 1920's and will eventually form The World Baptist Fellowship and then from Norris, the Baptist Bible Fellowship International breaks away in 1950.

When the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy came about, conservatives from the Arminian and the few remaining Calvinistic Baptists joined together to oppose the influence and heresy of a deadly liberalism. Unfortunately, there were no John Gill's, Abraham Booth's, John Gano's or J.P. Boyce's around to stand against the inroads of Arminianism and so the doctrinally immoral congress of Arminian and Calvinistic Baptists bred and gave birth to the monster we have today, without heart for its Calvinistic roots or a face by which it can be historically identified. It is a bastard child of an unbiblical compromise and has filled Baptist churches with unregenerate 'Carnal Christians'.

This immoral monster did not grow without a few voices of protest. In England, a non Baptist Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a powerful voice in the English wilderness, while in America an unknown writer began doing 'Studies in the Scriptures' and a man named Herendeen read these writings and had the vision to publish them, and so began the influential ministry of A. W. Pink. Both Lloyd-Jones and Pink were strong Calvinists and were determined to call their brethren back to the truth.

In the 1950's a Reformed Baptist Movement started, with a strict confessional adherence to the 1689 London Confession of Faith. Then too, there are numerous totally independent Sovereign Grace believing churches that have sprung up all over America in the last 30 years. Unfortunately most Calvinistic Baptist churches today are small and far too independent and suspicious of one another to be effective. This independence and suspicion is often a reaction to modern times, past mistakes and an overdose of pastoral pride.

I would like to quote from Appendix 1 in a 1994 book by Wardin on 'Baptists Around The World' -

"REFORMED/SOVEREIGN GRACE BAPTISTS

Reformed/Sovereign Grace Baptists seek to return to the Puritan heritage of the Regular Baptists of the seventeenth century, a classical period in Baptist development, and recover their theology and ecclesiology. They, by and large, endorse the First London (1646), Second London (1689), and Philadelphia (1742) Confessions of Faith. They oppose, on the one hand, the evangelistic techniques of modern evangelicalism as too superficial and, on the other hand, reject the hyper-Calvinism and anti-missionism of the Primitive Baptists as too sterile. With their adherence to Calvinist tenets, they tend to oppose premillennialism and also reject the tenets of Landmarkism. They approve revivals, if properly conducted, foreign missionaries, Sunday Schools, Bible and pastors' conferences, the publication of literature, and Christian schools. They advocate the independence of the local church and avoid most other denominational structures. Some churches practice a plurality of elders, while others have only one pastor. The movement also seeks to recover the observance of church discipline, a practice which most Baptist churches have lost.

With Roots both in the North and the South, Reformed/Sovereign Grace Baptists began to appear in the middle of the 1950's. Some of the impetus of the movement came from the efforts of Rolfe Barnard, an independent Baptist evangelist, and the writings of Arthur W. Pink. Probably the first formal organizational expression of the movement occurred in 1954 when Henry Mahan, pastor of the Thirteenth Street Baptist Church of Ashland, Kentucky, and an alumnus of Tennessee Temple College of Chattanooga, Tennessee, convened at his church the first meeting of the Sovereign Grace Bible Conference. Annual conferences in other parts of the country have followed, including conferences at the Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Calvary Baptist Church of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and the Greenwood Baptist Church of Pasadena, Texas. The movement has also been advanced by books and periodicals, including such Calvinistic English periodicals as Banner of Truth and Reformation Today, edited by a Strict Baptist pastor.

The Reformed/Sovereign Grace movement, however, has divided into two camps. One group generally takes the name of Reformed Baptist, while the other is more apt to use the designation of Sovereign Grace Baptist. A local church in either camp may carry Baptist, Reformed Baptist, or Sovereign Grace Baptist in its name or may not use the name Baptist at all. This movement has been growing rather spontaneously both in the USA and abroad and includes a Reformed Baptist movement in England. Churches, however, are generally very small. It is estimated that the two groups of Reformed Baptists are about equal in number of congregations and membership.

The renewed interest in Calvinism among Baptists in the last several decades is not, however, confined to Reformed or Sovereign Grace Baptists. Support for a return to Calvinistic tenets has also appeared among Southern Baptists and other Baptist groups.

A. Reformed Baptists

One center of Reformed Baptist strength is in Pennsylvania and surrounding areas. In 1967 the Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, began holding an annual pastors' conference under the leadership of its pastor, Walter Chantry, a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary. A few years later an annual Reformed Baptist Family Conference was begun, which met on Labor Day weekend. Ten churches, adopting the Philadelphia Confession, established a Reformed Baptist Association. It includes churches in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.

In 1985 in Anderson, Indiana, delegates from Reformed Baptist churches established Reformed Baptist Mission Services (RBMS), a service agency for missions. The doctrinal basis of RBMS is the London Confession of 1689 to which its contributing churches and missionaries must also subscribe. The mission coordinator of RBMS resides in Carlisle. In 1994 thirty-seven churches were members, located from Connecticut to California, and also including a church in Canada.

B. Sovereign Grace Baptists

Sovereign Grace Baptists are a result of differences with Reformed Baptists, which began about 1980, over certain doctrinal points. Sovereign Grace Baptists relate more closely to the First London Confession (1646) rather than the Second London Confession. They are more critical of Covenant Theology and place greater stress on the New Covenant. They are also less puritanical. The strength of this movement is in the Midwest, South, and West. One of the leaders in this movement is Jon Zens, editor of Searching Together, published in St. Croix, Wisconsin - a periodical which Norbert Ward began in 1972 in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Baptist Reformation Review."

As we look around in 1998, our Particular Baptist heritage has come through all kinds of 'isms' and 'schisms' to fragment us into Calvinistic Baptists of '57 Strains' - none of which can work together because of doctrinal territorial rights! We have Reformed Baptists that live or die on the inspiration of the 1689, and on the other extreme are Landmark Baptists, aloof and are often judgmental of others who are not as faithful, as they see themselves. The Southern Baptist Convention now has a developing group of 'Founder's Conference' men that attempt recalling the Southern Baptist Convention to its Calvinistic roots while capable of ignoring the Cooperative Program. Fundamental Baptists have been able to purge themselves of any and all historical affiliation of Calvinism and have dedicated themselves to numerical growth and Armageddon.

Yet, in some respects Calvinistic Baptists are managing to have conferences fellowships, publications, missionaries and web pages!

Our lack of effectiveness and interdependence, and at the same time our suspicions and skepticism are a result of the disease that brought on the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy -- it is not liberalism vs. conservatism; nor Gillism vs. Fullerism; nor open communion vs. closed, nor a succession of baptisms vs. a succession of truth, and it is not even our differences over varying (and sometimes questionable) methods, rather I believe the problem in 1998 is the same as in 1900 and even as far back as 1845 and further...our problem stems from a lack of persecution! We are no longer a Faith on the run, but we are now a respectable Denomination like the other denominations. It is true we may never see real revival and a true Baptist Faith re-emerge until we are forced back to meet in cellars and caves. We are too rich and have need of nothing or no one, we don't even need faith! Baptists have become another American Religion, and are growing fat on success and lazy on abundance! We are like Jeshurun who, "waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation." We are totally unable to effectively deal with the material blessings that have been entrusted to us. It is not just the clerical 'clouds without water' on TV that are controlled by materialism, it has affected us all. It is true that the church bore prosperity and the daughter devoured its mother!

And so, how do we relate all of this to our Protestant brethren? If and when we again emphasize our Baptist distinctive and the method and message of the New Testament, while still embracing Protestants as our brethren, though by our belief...unbaptized, then they will love, respect and appreciate us as we do them, or they will not.

Baptists are protestants in the sense that they protested Rome's sprinkling unbelievers, both babes and adults, yet Baptists are not Protestants, as those who tried to Re-form Rome. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Knox all paid a heavy price to bless us with their devotion and scholarship, and Baptists should unashamedly be gracious in their appreciation and fellowship wherever they are able. Yet, in my opinion and studies, I feel the Protestants owe a greater debt of respect to Baptists for having shown them the way to Liberty of Conscience and freedom from Constantine's 'church-state-ism' of which they now fully embrace.

And as important as this 'soul liberty' truth is to the Baptist Faith, the main difference between Baptists and Protestants is in baptism and that Baptists insist on it being by immersion of believers only as established and practiced in the New Testament, which means a regenerate church membership only!

Protestants and Baptists have a different approach to the Holy Scriptures and while some see it as a very minor difference, Calvinistic Baptists should see it as it is. Protestants, in the Westminster Confession, the Savoy Confession and the Thirty-nine Articles, etc. establish their doctrine, message and method on the whole Bible. Both Old and New Testament are essential in their polity and policy of their churches, so that a justification of infant sprinkling must be correlated and deduced in Old Testament male circumcision. Where else do they get the religious ceremony of incorporating unbelieving children into the community of believers, or of a clerical priesthood, or sabbatarianism, or ceremonialism etc., except from the Old Testament? For instance, how could Calvin agree with the burning of Servetus as well as other Protestant persecutions, without that practice coming from the Old Testament?

Baptists, on the other hand, are historically centered in the New Testament (fully embracing both Old and New Testaments as divinely inspired!). But, decided on the New Testament having superseded the Old, so that the ethic is new, and will not tolerate any kind of persecution; the method is new, promoting first repentance and belief, then the ceremony of identification with that repentance and faith in immersion; the priesthood is new and includes every believer and eliminates a special elite clergy; the message is new, salvation by grace through faith, and not of works of our righteousness; the worship is new, now in the simplicity of the Spirit and Truth, not ritual and architecture; and the foundation is new, no longer exclusive of Gentiles, but inclusive to the whole world.

When we look at Baptists today, it is difficult to see any semblance of kinship to Baptists of the past, but this complaint is shared by our Protestant brethren, in that they too have had their ranks decimated by Americanism, liberalism and Arminianism.

It is an easy thing to attack and tear down, it is more difficult to build up and recommend. I have been a sovereign grace Baptist since 1960, almost 40 years and have witnessed the hand of God in re-introducing and re-establishing the truth of sovereign grace across the land which is nothing short of miraculous. Our church in Springfield, Missouri has been a part of an attempt toward a Calvinistic Baptist Association, that was over structured and did not work for us, but we tried. I am afraid, and confess, that we Calvinistic Baptists today cannot clearly discern essential truth and tolerable differences in our own ranks. I still hope to see a fellowship or an association of Calvinistic Baptist churches coming together in a carefully guarded unity, to work together in communication, mission endeavors, publication and possible higher education.

I admit that Calvinistic Baptist church leaders today lack both depth and spirituality in comparison to those of two or three hundred years ago. We have too many distractions, too many conveniences, too much ease and too much freedom to be fully effective. The question I ask myself is, if those godly giants of by gone days were able to work together in associational effectiveness, without losing an ounce of autonomy and independence and yet accomplish so much...then why can't men of grace today attempt a union of churches or pastors without feeling as if they have lost all hope of Baptist independence? The independent Baptist spirit that prevails among Calvinistic Baptists in the 1990's is an American inheritance, and is not a historical Baptist one. We should be a lot more interdependent and accountable to each other.

The various strains of Calvinistic Baptists continues to find pockets of friendship and fellowship in numerous excellent conferences. Still, we make every difference a test of fellowship and find we can work with very few and very few can work with us. We have a new issue every week that keeps us apart. We have not yet learned the level of maturity that needs to exist to effectively work out the graciousness of grace together.

I advocate walking in fellowship, as far as possible, with all who truly know the Lord. I believe you feel the same.

I recommend fellowship and friendship to our Calvinistic paedo- baptist brethren. Both sides know where that 'working together' ends and how that their convictions and churches are to be respected by we, their brethren and likewise they to ours.

I also suggest it is time for Calvinistic Baptists to consider working as hard on interdependence as we have on independence and open discussion of some kind concerning an organized fellowship that would allow many individual torches to be placed together to form a greater light than what we presently have. Calvinistic Baptists could learn a great deal from the Southern Baptist Convention, whose churches can financially support, fellowship and cooperate fully with established Arminians, women pastors, segregation and even liberalism, not that Calvinistic Baptists would necessarily follow their extreme but, to their commitment to a higher cause than their own independence. Calvinistic Baptist churches would not have a 'program' that would be their rallying point, nor numbers, nor money, but the same higher cause that banded those early Calvinistic Associations together...their unwavering belief and commitment to the absolute sovereignty of God!

We need to cast off suspicions and skepticism and lovingly embrace those of like faith and practice. Our churches are not little 'kingdoms' over which a pastor lords, but congregations of Christ working together for the same goal in the same way. Somehow, we can be of one mind and heart and we may even see some of our numerous 'special' beliefs swallowed up in the love we are to have one for another.

I feel the various strains of Baptists as a whole are providential but that the 'strains' of like minded Calvinistic Baptists are detrimental to an effective witness, at a time when our unity and message of Grace is desperately needed by an on looking world.

In conclusion, I believe Baptists will have to look back to be able to see what is ahead! The iceberg that waited for the Titanic, not only made history of the greatest vessel of its time but was itself a piece of history, that the Titanic should have been preparing for. The waters the Titanic sped through were known from history. Had those in charge, paid as much attention to the history of navigation in those cold Atlantic waters as to trying to make history as the largest, fastest and first, then they would have altered their manner, and probably their course.

And here I offer what may be a lone opinion, but I do not see Baptists today heading for a disastrous encounter, such as the Titanic faced in 1912, rather I see the Baptist Faith in general as already having met its grand demise in its embrace of the frozen coldness of man centered religion and the greater part having sunk beneath the waves of 'successism' and perished in the ways of the world. To illustrate, three weeks ago, I was interviewed by a graduate student of a Fundamental Baptist College and while he could only be termed a 'nominal' Calvinist, he related to me that he thought only about 20% of todays Fundamental Baptist Church members are even converted. This indictment is made toward the most conservative, Bible believing people in the world!

But, all is not lost, as there has always been a remnant and that remnant is still struggling against man oriented Arminianism and the cold waters of intellectual liberalism. The only thing left are the smaller life rafts of Grace trying to pick up the remnant. Could those individuals wanting and needing to be rescued be like pastors and churches that are tired of the religious games and circus that most have fallen into, desiring truth again at any cost?

My complaint is not with the past, that cannot be changed...my complaint is with those who disdain our Baptist history and prefer to make their own way, to tread the deadening waters alone and would rather die alone than to affiliate together as Calvinistic Baptists, and have to row upstream.

I am really not advocating another Baptist Association at this point, but I do advocate Calvinistic Baptist pastors entering freely into discussion as to how Calvinistic Baptists could work together to the maximum effectiveness, without feeling guilty or naughty.

The cause of truth that God has blessed us with, is greater than our skepticism, pettiness, ambitions, compromise and our own agendas.

I believe David's question to still be relevant today..."Is their not a cause?" I believe the answer is yes, but we must learn from those past warriors of the faith who fought the good fight and finished their course. We must be willing to mine the treasures of Baptist History again to our own spiritual good and growth.

Learning Baptist history is vanity, if it makes us proud and pharisaical toward others. But, when we can make those old Particular Baptists convictions our own; when we can grasp their nobility of character; their depth of spirituality; when we can enter into their footsteps, then and only then will we be able to embrace the future as mature pastors and people free from pride's shackles and bondage.

Then too, we will need regain more than just the 'five points of Calvinism' to accomplish a full return to the place of our fore-fathers. We will have to crush the prevailing sinfulness of Ambition and find, maybe for the first time, a sincere, Christ like humility. I tell you, a humble Arminian is a better companion than a haughty Calvinist, and we will fare better and learn more from anyone who lives and knows brokenness, than from a hundred self-promoting, arrogant Calvinistic 'know-it-alls.' Our judgment and vision are wrong! We see embracing and promoting the Truth of God as more important than embracing the God of Truth! Pastors today are are like the priests and prophets in Isaiah's day who were charged with erring in judgment and vision because of wine and strong drink. We are intoxicated with pride and ambition!

May the wonder of God's Grace find its way to our hearts and come forth in the sweetness of a gracious, humble spirit, which is at present a stranger to us.

Lord, save us from ourselves!