The Deep Roots of Controversy

I.    The Deep Roots of Controversy

A.    The First Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island, and the First (now United) Baptist Church in Newport, Rhode Island, share the distinction of being the oldest Baptist churches in America

1.    Both originated about 1638. Roger Williams, first pastor of the Providence church, and Dr. John Clarke, first pastor of the Newport church, played vital roles in the colony’s earliest history.

2.    The middle colonies, rather than New England, became the center of Baptist activity, especially the Philadelphia area, due to the Quaker policy of religious toleration.

3.    In 1707, five local churches established the Philadelphia Baptist Association, which in 1742 adopted the Phila­delphia Confession of Faith.

B.    Baptists formed their first national organization in Philadelphia in 1814.

1.    It was called the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions, but more com­monly known simply as the Triennial Convention because it met once every three years.

2.    These Baptists organized the American Baptist Publication Society in 1824 and the American Baptist Home Mission Society in 1832.

3.The mid-nineteenth-century separation of Baptists in the South from those in the North a)the issue of slavery served as the catalyst to complete the separation. b)Baptists in the South felt that they were receiving unequal treatment in the expenditure of funds and in the approval of missionary candidates.

(1)    On May 8, 1845, these southern brethren met in First Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, and established the Southern Baptist Convention.

(2)In 1859, the convention established its first seminary-Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. c)Notable distinctions became apparent, how­ever, between the Baptists in the North and their brethren to the South.

(1)    While the Southern gravitated toward denom­inational centralization,

(2)    the Baptists in the North tended to conceive of their "denomination" as a loose structure within which the local churches could operate.

(3)    Two different home mission societies and an education society functioned independently of each other, often duplicating one another’s efforts.

(4)    In 1907 the Baptists in the North reorganized themselves into the Northern Baptist Convention (NBC).

(a)From its very inception the NBC was an inclusive organization, (b)with both liberals and conser­vatives serving in places of leadership.

(c)    the Southern Baptist Convention waited until 1925 to adopt a statement of faith, t

(d)    he NBC never did adopt one, and this issue became a major battleground between modernists and conservatives.