Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History
Kelsey and I will be offering three articles for you on being Baptist. She presented what Baptists believe and why. I will offer a little background in both of mine on where some of those ideas originated. Together, we hope our shared efforts will offer both the value of our Baptist heritage as well as some timely reminders of why claiming the Baptist tradition still has vital merit. Now we invite you to join us on a journey of Baptist history and traditions still reverberating in our time.
What Does It Mean to Be Baptist?
Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History, Part 1
Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History, Part 2
Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History, Part 3
The Beginnings of Baptist History
Imagine a world where nothing you thought, said, or did, mattered. Your status depended on your connections. Your connections depended on your status. And both largely depended on where and to whom you were born.
For much of our Christian history, faith could be used as a way to keep you in your place. Everything was as God intended.
Rulers and the order of the world existed in the ways it did because God said so. You were to remain silent and submissive.
Infant baptism provided you with a place in heaven, as long as you behaved yourself and maintained the status quo.
If you were poor, that was God’s doing; God’s will controlled everything. And the Church was the arbitrator and dispenser of that will.
In the late 1300s and early 1400s, Europe began to awaken to a long-forgotten past. Art, architecture, philosophy spawned new insights and ideas. New insights in science and astronomy followed new communication technology.
The printing press and moveable block print would further transform how information would be shared. Books and pamphlets would be mass-produced for the first time creating new incentives to read.
Tutors and schools for previously overlooked populations expanded, as did a newly emerging educated middle class.
Curiosity increased.
Motivation to learn expanded.
Discoveries mounted.
Impatience with authority rose.
The Beginnings of Those Crazy Baptists
And all this excitement led to a crisis.
Just over five hundred years ago, the church, kings, princes, and regular people clashed. Led by Martin Luther, the world of 1517 erupted into the Protestant Reformation.
But for Baptists, the Reformation was only the beginning. The subsequent contentious years would be filled with heated debates followed by decades of tragic violence and devastating religious wars.
In England, pockets of believers begin to openly question the authority of the king. English exiles in The Netherlands became highly influenced by subversive thought percolating throughout the rich and multicultural dynamics of Amsterdam. These would become the first English Baptists led by John Smyth and Thomas Helwys.
They began the audacious movement that would migrate back to England and then on to the newly established English colonies of the New World.
Rejecting Infant Baptism
Baptized as a baby in those days, all people automatically began life under the power of the pope, through the authority of the Church and with the sanctioning of the king. Such was the order of things.
Baptists disagreed.
Increasingly well-educated, these early Baptists found through their study of languages that the Greek word for baptism in the New Testament meant “to be put under.” Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist as an adult.
If it was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for those who wanted to follow Jesus.
Rejecting the Religious Authority of the King:
In 1612, questioning the authority of the king,[1] Thomas Helwys said these heretical words:
"The King is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them."
Helwys had returned to England from Amsterdam and became known as the first Baptist on English soil. He was arrested, sent to Newgate Prison, and was never heard from again.
Persecution increased. Others, like Helwys, found themselves at odds with the ruling authorities.[2] Escape to the new colonies developing in America offered opportunities to escape persecution and to initiate a new spiritual beginning.
Roger Williams. Britannica.com
Rejecting the Authority of Religious Authorities
Roger Williams is our earliest and best example of a classic Baptist subversive.
Trained as a minister in London, he came to these shores in 1630 fleeing religious persecution from the Church of England. He discovered the Puritans of Massachusetts to be no more hospitable.
The heresies that got him into trouble were religious toleration, advocacy of church and state separation, respect for Native American rights, and respect for all people regardless of background.
Williams was horrified to see the way the Puritan leaders treated the Native Americans. Already, the colonists acted with increasing haughtiness.
The Puritans and Pilgrims strutted about these new colonies with what Williams viewed as a wholly unwarranted and fully sinful “ownership.” This was a land that had been lived on, cultivated, and loved for centuries by Native Americans.
Roger Williams fought this Pilgrim and Puritan attitude of entitlement and white superiority. He befriended the Native Americans, learned several of their languages, and attempted to ally with them against the other colonist’s abuses—until he was forced to flee from Massachusetts.
Then those he was attempting to protect, protected him. The Narragansett Indians welcomed him as one of their own. Later, when forced to flee a second time, Williams, founded what became known as Rhode Island.
In 1636, he established a new city on Narragansett Bay he called Providence. And to this new place, he welcomed other exiles like Anne Hutchinson from Massachusetts and many Baptists, Quakers, Jews, Native Americans, and even what he called “Turks” (Muslims).
Williams was a man ahead of his time. And he embodied some of our first courageous Baptist stances in this growing country.
As the first Baptist on American soil, he began what is still known today as “The First Baptist Church in America” in Providence, Rhode Island. Thanks to his courageous and faithful spirit, our country still attempts to embody much of what he stood for.
Read more
What Does It Mean to Be Baptist?
Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History, Part 1
Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History, Part 2
Our Crazy (and Vital) Baptist History, Part 3
Footnotes:
[1] King James of England was the same one who commissioned the “King James” version of the Bible in 1611. Not a very nice guy, and very paranoid.
[2] John Bunyan of Pilgrim’s Progress and John Milton of Paradise Lost were two of the most famous who in those days maintained Baptists ideals and suffered as a result.
David Jordan, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Decatur