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Baptist

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Origin 1609 to 1612

A Protestant tradition defined by believer's baptism, administered by full immersion only to those old enough to profess personal faith, and thus rejecting the infant baptism of most other churches. It holds strongly to the autonomy of each local congregation, which governs itself without bishops or higher courts, to the priesthood of all believers, to the Bible as the supreme authority, and to liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state. Worship is typically simple and centred on preaching, and the two ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper are seen as symbolic acts of obedience rather than channels of grace. Emerging among English Separatists in the early seventeenth century and growing enormously in North America, Baptists are among the largest Protestant families, divided into many conventions and ranging from Calvinist to Arminian in theology.

Facts
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Trinitarian: one God in three persons 1Tradition: Christianity
Position on Sexuality
Same-sex sexual relationships are held contrary to teaching; LGBT individuals are welcomed as members but not ordained, and same-sex unions are not blessed 3
Baptist polity is congregational and the family has no single national teaching authority, but its three largest American conventions converge on the same reading rather than spreading across it. The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message names homosexuality among the forms of sexual immorality Christians should oppose while setting no formal bar on ordinary membership. American Baptist Churches USA's General Board amended We Are American Baptists in 2005 to hold the practice of homosexuality incompatible with Scripture, while its own published caveat states no resolution binds a local congregation's own practice. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated's president stated in 2012 that marriage is a biblical covenant between a man and a woman and barred its endorsed military chaplains in 2014 from participating in a same-sex marriage or union, while affirming the Convention does not dictate positions to its autonomous constituent churches.
Sexuality Position Detail
Baptist church government is congregational, and no national body speaks with binding authority for the whole family, yet its three largest American conventions read the same way rather than spreading across the range. The Southern Baptist Convention's confessional statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, names homosexuality among the forms of sexual immorality Christians should oppose, alongside adultery and pornography, but neither the confession nor the Convention's 2015 marriage resolution sets out a formal bar on an LGBT individual's ordinary church membership, and practice on that question varies by autonomous local congregation. American Baptist Churches USA's General Board amended its own statement of identity, We Are American Baptists, in November 2005 to hold that Scripture places sexual intimacy within marriage between one man and one woman and that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with biblical teaching, while the denomination's own published caveat states that no national resolution or policy statement obligates any congregation or region to a particular position. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated's president stated in 2012 that the Convention affirms marriage as a sacred biblical covenant between a man and a woman while explicitly disclaiming any power to dictate that position to its autonomous constituent churches, and in January 2014 the Convention directed its own endorsed military chaplains not to participate in any activity implying or condoning a same-sex marriage or union, an officiant-level restriction distinct from a membership bar. No source read across any of the three states that an LGBT individual is denied ordinary church membership at the national level. 4
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Origins
Origin Period
1609 to 1612 1
Place of Origin
Amsterdam, among English exiles, and then England 1
Founder
John Smyth (c. 1570-1612) and Thomas Helwys (c. 1575-c. 1616). 1
Finances
Financial Disclosure Regime
Baptists hold the local autonomy of the individual congregation as a defining principle of their tradition: each Baptist church governs itself, calls its own ministers and manages its own property and finances independently, with no bishop, council or central body holding authority over another congregation's affairs. Baptist conventions and unions, the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention USA among them, are voluntary associations of self-governing churches rather than a single denominational treasury for Baptists as a whole. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for the Baptist tradition as a whole to disclose. 5
Giving
Standing Giving ExpectationSourced to the subject's own account
Baptist polity sets no single Baptist-wide giving rule, because local church autonomy is the tradition's own defining principle rather than an incidental feature. Baptist denominational bodies, associations, state and national conventions, hold no authority over a local Baptist church; a Baptist congregation itself selects its own leadership, decides its own financial matters and directs its own affairs without outside control. The Southern Baptist Convention's own 1992 resolution on the subject states that general Baptist bodies, the Convention itself included, are "fully autonomous, each 'independent in its own sphere,' and thus beyond the coercion of any other body or local church." The range this leaves is real rather than a description in the abstract: the American Baptist Churches USA and the Southern Baptist Convention both merely preach a voluntary tithe with no consequence, while the Progressive National Baptist Convention operates a genuinely different, codified due, a member congregation must pay at least one percent of its operating receipts to the Convention to keep its own voting rights. No Baptist-wide body could set a single member-giving rule even if it wished to; none holds the authority to. 7 5
How the Expectation Is EnforcedSourced to the subject's own account
Customary Norm 7
Disputed
Adherents Today
53,871,526 to 100,000,000 9
The Baptist World Alliance's own 2025 census counts 53,871,526 baptized members across its affiliated fellowships, the more conservative, directly-counted bound. Broader estimates of the worldwide Baptist tradition, including independent conventions and congregations outside the BWA, commonly run to 100 million or more, though no equally rigorous count of that wider figure was located in this pass.
History
Separation or Divergence
The Church of England, by way of English Separatism: Smyth's exile congregation at Amsterdam adopted believers' baptism in 1609. 1
Separation or DivergenceSourced to the subject's own account
The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in an explicit split from northern Baptists after the American Baptist Home Mission Society refused to commission a missionary who owned slaves; the new convention was founded to defend the right of slaveholders to serve as missionaries. It formally apologized for that origin in a resolution adopted 20 to 22 June 1995, on its 150th anniversary. 2
Date of Separation
1609 to 1612 1
Organisation
Governance
Congregational: each congregation self-governing 1
Ordination
Varies between provinces or member bodies 1
Congregational polity means each church decides: many Baptist unions ordain women, and the Southern Baptist Convention has restricted the pastorate to men since 2000.
Relation to the State
Varies by Province 5
Baptist churches are congregationally governed with no central hierarchy and no country establishes Baptist Christianity as a state religion; individual Baptist bodies' legal recognition varies entirely by the country and denomination in question.
Practice
Liturgical Language
The vernacular 1
Practice StatusSourced to the subject's own account
Baptist congregations are typically independent, and their doctrine and worship are published openly with no closed initiatory core; believer's baptism itself is a public rite rather than a secret one. 6
Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
The Baptist World Alliance's own 2025 census counts 283 member Baptist fellowships in 138 countries and territories, 178,000 churches and 53,000,000 baptized members; the figure explicitly excludes the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest single Baptist body in the United States, which withdrew from the Alliance in 2004. 8
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
The same article characterizes BWA affiliated bodies as accounting for about half the Baptists in the world, implying a total worldwide Baptist population on the order of 100 million once non-BWA bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention are folded back in, a much rougher, unofficial figure than the Alliance's own detailed member count. 8
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2025-01-01 8
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2026-08-14 8
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
Church-Reported Rolls 8
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 8
Learn More
Baptism, and What the Argument Is Really About

Baptists are named for a rite, and the rite is a proxy for a bigger claim about what a church is.

The tradition begins with English Separatists, congregations that had given up on reforming the Church of England from within, among them a group in exile in Amsterdam under John Smyth, who around 1609 concluded that infant baptism was no baptism at all and baptised himself and then his congregation. Thomas Helwys brought part of that congregation back to England around 1612 and wrote one of the earliest English arguments for complete liberty of conscience, including for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, which was an extraordinary position at the time and got him imprisoned.

Two Baptist streams formed. The General Baptists were Arminian, holding that Christ died for all; the Particular Baptists, from the 1630s, were Calvinist, holding a definite atonement, and produced the London Confession of 1644 and its influential 1689 successor. The family has contained both ever since, which is one reason Baptists are so hard to summarise doctrinally.

The theological point beneath the water is this. If baptism is administered to infants, the church is coextensive with the community, and everyone born into the parish is in it. If baptism follows a personal profession, the church is a gathered body of the convinced, and membership means something a person has done. Everything else Baptists are known for follows: the insistence that the local congregation is the church; the refusal of any authority above it; and the demand for separation of church and state, which Baptists held long before it was respectable and which they argued for as a religious principle rather than a secular one.

Baptism by full immersion came somewhat later than the principle itself, from the 1640s.

The Congregation Is the Church

Baptist governance is the purest form of congregationalism among the large Protestant families, and it explains both the tradition's energy and its fissility.

Each local church is autonomous and complete. It calls and dismisses its own pastor, admits and disciplines its own members, owns its own property and answers to no bishop, presbytery or synod. Decisions are taken by the members in a church meeting, often by simple majority. There is no court of appeal above it, because Baptists deny that any such court has authority.

Associations, conventions and unions exist and do a great deal, missions, seminaries, disaster relief, pensions, publishing, but their power over a member church is limited to one thing: they can decline to associate with it. A convention cannot order a congregation to do anything. It can withdraw fellowship, which is exactly how the Southern Baptist Convention has acted in recent years against churches with women serving as pastors and against churches judged to have mishandled abuse allegations.

Confessions are treated accordingly. Baptists write them, and describe them as statements of what a body currently believes rather than binding creeds, which is why Baptist confessions are revised. The Southern Baptist Convention revised its Baptist Faith and Message in 1963 and again in 2000, and the 2000 revision, restricting the pastoral office to men, and removing a clause about Christ as the criterion for interpreting Scripture, was the endpoint of the conservative resurgence of 1979 onward, a deliberate and successful campaign to change who appointed the convention's seminary faculty and agency heads.

Where there is no hierarchy, control is exercised through appointments and through withdrawal of fellowship, and the Baptist record shows both used to full effect.

Where It Is Now

Baptists are among the largest Protestant families in the world, with global estimates usually running near a hundred million once the many independent and unaffiliated congregations are included. Precision is impossible by design: a tradition in which every congregation is autonomous and many belong to no convention cannot be counted properly.

The United States holds the centre of gravity, and the American story is inseparable from race. Baptists grew explosively on the frontier and among enslaved people, and the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 in an explicit split over whether slaveholders could serve as missionaries; it formally apologised for that origin in 1995. The historically Black Baptist conventions, the National Baptist Convention USA and its offshoots, the Progressive National Baptist Convention among them, are large bodies in their own right and were the institutional base of much of the civil rights movement.

The SBC is now in sustained decline, having fallen from a peak above sixteen million members in the mid-2000s to figures in the twelve-to-thirteen-million range, with baptisms down over the same period. Its current internal disputes are public: the role of women in ministry, on which it has moved to exclude churches with women pastors, and the handling of sexual abuse, after a 2022 independent investigation found that convention leaders had maintained a private list of accused ministers while resisting calls for a public database.

Growth is elsewhere, Nigeria, India, Brazil and across sub-Saharan Africa, where Baptist unions are large and expanding. As with much of world Protestantism, the numbers and the institutional wealth are no longer in the same place.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Baptist directly: "Leroy Fitts's A History of Black Baptists is an academic history, published by Broadman Press, of Black Baptist churches in America from their origins through the twentieth century."

Source A History of Black BaptistsLeroy Fitts

This source names Baptist directly: "The Southern Baptist Convention's own explanation of the Cooperative Program, its unified plan of giving in which each autonomous cooperating church voluntarily decides what percentage of its..."

This source names Baptist directly: "Baptist News Global's obituary of Addie Davis, who was ordained to the gospel ministry by Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina on 9 August 1964, the first woman ordained by a..."

This source names Baptist directly: "religious landscape is Southern Baptist and Methodist country, but its most consequential religious history is the Black church's role in the civil rights movement."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "Wikipedia's article on American Baptist Churches USA, community edited."

Source American Baptist Churches USA (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "dedicated article on the American Baptist Publication Society, founded 1824 in Washington, D.C."

Source American Baptist Publication Society (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Baptists divided in 1845 over whether a slaveholder could be appointed a missionary, producing the Southern Baptist Convention.

Source The Civil War as a Theological CrisisMark A. Noll

This source names Baptist directly: "frontier revivalism, with Southern Baptist and Methodist camp meetings spreading through the Ozarks and the Delta in the early nineteenth century and leaving a still visible culture of small rural..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "this reference collection of historic Baptist confessions of faith, published by Judson Press, a Baptist publishing house, gathering primary confessional documents from different Baptist bodies..."

Source Baptist Confessions of FaithWilliam L. Lumpkin

This source names Baptist directly: "Wikipedia's article on the Baptist Faith and Message, read directly for this pass, which states the original was adopted in 1925 under a committee led by E."

This source names Baptist directly: "The Wikipedia article on the Baptist World Alliance, reporting that per an Alliance census released in 2025, the BWA counts 283 participating Baptist fellowships in 138 countries and territories..."

This source names Baptist directly: "The Baptist World Alliance's own membership information, read 2026-08-22, reporting an Alliance census of 283 participating Baptist fellowships in 138 countries with 178,000 churches and 53,000,000..."

This source names Baptist directly: "A Baptist heritage center's article explaining local church autonomy as the defining Baptist polity principle, distinguishing it from any denominational body's authority over a local congregation."

This source names Baptist directly: "21, 2018, was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became the most widely heard Christian evangelist of the twentieth century."

This source names Baptist directly: "enslaved parents and was ordained a Baptist minister before being drawn toward the Holiness movement's emphasis on sanctification as a distinct experience following conversion."

This source names Baptist directly: "of the congregations, Black and white, Baptist and Unitarian, that have used the building across its history, which should be sought in dedicated studies."

This source names Baptist directly: "14 June 2022, on the Southern Baptist Convention's Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force presenting its recommendations to the denomination's annual meeting: a public "Ministry Check" website..."

This source names Baptist directly: "Charles Harrison Mason, a licensed Baptist minister pushed out of the Baptist tradition over his holiness preaching, organized the church at Lexington, Mississippi, in 1897."

Source Church of God in Christ (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "Mason and Charles Price Jones's Baptist background and 1897 founding, the 1907 Azusa Street era split into Pentecostal and Holiness factions, episcopal polity, the Assemblies of God's 1914 departure..."

Source Church of God in Christ (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "Biblical Recorder / Baptist Press network reporting, read 2026-08-22, on Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program giving for fiscal year 2023-2024 against its adopted budget goal."

Source CP Giving Tops $191 Million, 2% Below Annual Budget Goal (Biblical Recorder)Biblical Recorder / Baptist Press network

This source names Baptist directly: "article on Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church is a state sponsored reference encyclopedia entry on the Montgomery church founded in 1877, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and..."

Source Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist ChurchEncyclopedia of Alabama

This source names Baptist directly: "including Metropolitan AME and Shiloh Baptist, were central to organising the civil rights movement's march on Washington in 1963."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "The American Baptist Churches USA's own General Board policy statement on tithing, adopted June 1992, stating throughout that tithing is a grateful response to grace rather than a legalistic..."

This source names Baptist directly: "groups non-Muslim as of May 2007, with Baptist, Pentecostal and Korean Christian congregations facing persistent denial, and documents the Ferghana Jehovah's Witnesses congregation's deregistration..."

Source Freedom of Religion in Uzbekistan (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "chapel in the church of Saint John the Baptist, now Saint Bavo's Cathedral, its central panel, the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, shows a vast gathering of saints, martyrs, popes and prophets..."

Herod Antipas, Figures

This source names Baptist directly: "who imprisoned and executed John the Baptist for denouncing his marriage to Herodias, his brother's former wife, and as the Herod before whom Luke's gospel places a brief hearing of Jesus during the..."

This source names Baptist directly: "member denominations span Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal church government and doctrine, grouped together because each was founded by and for Black Christians excluded from, or segregated..."

Source The Black Church in the African American ExperienceC. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya

This source names Baptist directly: "This is the Progressive National Baptist Convention's own history page, published on the denomination's official website, describing its own founding and institutional history."

Source History of the PNBC (pnbc.org)Progressive National Baptist Conventionthe holders' own account

Ordained a Baptist minister, though his mature ministry, especially the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples he co-founded in 1944, was deliberately interracial and interfaith rather than confined to Baptist practice.

This source names Baptist directly: "Topeka is also home to the Westboro Baptist Church, an independent congregation whose picketing campaigns have been condemned by nearly every other Baptist body in the country."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "Southern Baptist and Christian Church congregations remain dominant across the state."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson's own 1802 letter, articulates his reading of the First Amendment as building a wall of separation between church and state, a phrase that..."

Source Letter to the Danbury Baptist AssociationThomas Jefferson

Ordained Baptist minister; pastored Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, and later co-pastored Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, with his father.

Source Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical BiographyThe Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

This source names Baptist directly: "University, covering his life, his Baptist ministry and his leadership of the civil rights movement."

Source Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical BiographyThe Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

This source names Baptist directly: "Black voters relied on rural Baptist and Methodist congregations for shelter, meeting space and leadership, and several churches that hosted organisers were burned in retaliation."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's own news site, reporting that its president R."

Founded and led the National Baptist Convention's Woman's Convention, the largest Black women's organization in the country for decades, after her 1900 address on women's exclusion from denominational leadership.

This source names Baptist directly: "edited article on the National Baptist Convention of America International."

This source names Baptist directly: "organization record for National Baptist Convention USA Inc, showing no Form 990 filings on file and stating that the organization is not required to submit tax filings because the Internal Revenue..."

This source names Baptist directly: "Wikipedia's article on the National Baptist Convention, USA, community edited."

Source National Baptist Convention, USA (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "religious settlements in the country. Baptist congregations, both white Southern Baptist and historically Black denominations, are the state's dominant tradition."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "published 27 May 2022, on the Southern Baptist Convention's own release, two days after the Guidepost Solutions investigation's own findings were published, of a 205 page database naming more than..."

This source names Baptist directly: "The Southern Baptist Convention's own resolution "On Supporting A Federal Marriage Amendment," adopted 15 to 16 June 2004 at the Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, restating the convention's position..."

Source On Supporting A Federal Marriage Amendment (Southern Baptist Convention, 2004)Southern Baptist Conventionthe holders' own account

This source names Baptist directly: "The Southern Baptist Convention's own resolution, adopted at its annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, 16 to 17 June 2015, in anticipation of the Supreme Court's Obergefell ruling."

Our Story, Sources

This source names Baptist directly: "Tremont Temple Baptist Church's own Our Story page is an institutional self account, not independent scholarly history; the atlas records no individual author because the page speaks in the..."

Source Our Story

This source names Baptist directly: "entry on the Progressive National Baptist Convention, whose Marriage subsection states that the denomination leaves it up to local churches to decide on blessings of same-sex marriage, citing the..."

Source Progressive National Baptist Convention (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "profile for the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., drawing on the 2020 Religious Congregations and Membership Study, which counted 254,571 members across 363 congregations in the United..."

This source names Baptist directly: "The Progressive National Baptist Convention's own Constitution and By-Laws, whose Article 1, Section 1a requires each member Baptist church, not individual members directly, to contribute at least..."

This source names Baptist directly: "of the Orisha and Spiritual Baptist Faiths, Frances Henry's 2003 academic study from the University of the West Indies Press, drawn from years of Trinidad fieldwork, traces the Orisha and Spiritual..."

This source names Baptist directly: "commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention's own Sexual Abuse Task Force and carried out by Guidepost Solutions, a third party investigations firm, released May 15, 2022."

This source names Baptist directly: "The Southern Baptist Convention's own resolution, adopted 20 to 22 June 1995 in Atlanta on its 150th anniversary, acknowledging that slavery played a role in the convention's 1845 formation and..."

This source names Baptist directly: "The Southern Baptist Convention's own 1992 resolution affirming that neither local Baptist churches nor general Baptist bodies, including the Convention itself, hold coercive authority over one..."

This source names Baptist directly: "full religious liberty, sheltering Baptists, Quakers and Jews alike."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "a same-sex union ceremony at Covenant Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., a member congregation of the Progressive National Baptist Convention."

This source names Baptist directly: "organization founded in 1970 by Baptist pastor Bob Pierce, and led since 1979 by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham."

Source Samaritan's Purse (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "founding history: founded 1970 by Baptist pastor Bob Pierce in Hollywood, California, relocated to Boone, North Carolina after Franklin Graham became president in 1979."

Source Samaritan's Purse (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention's own Sexual Abuse Task Force and carried out by Guidepost Solutions, a third party investigations firm, released May 2022."

This source names Baptist directly: "and later arrangements and Lowry's Baptist ministry and hymnal editing career."

He was formed in the British Baptist mission and led its choir before the events of 1949.

He was a catechist of the Baptist Missionary Society before 1921.

Source Kimbangu: An African Prophet and His ChurchMarie-Louise Martin

This source names Baptist directly: "Digital Archivist at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary."

Source Soon And Very Soon (Hymnology Archive)Chris Fenner, Hymnology Archive

Southern Baptist Convention Disfellowships Saddleback Church (Christianity Today) names Baptist by its exact full name: ristianity Today reporting the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee's Februa

This source names Baptist directly: "reference page on the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated's stance on LGBTQ issues."

This source names Baptist directly: "Nashville's density of Southern Baptist, Church of Christ and gospel music publishing houses earned it the nickname the buckle of the Bible Belt, anchored by the Southern Baptist Convention's..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "The Baptist Faith and Message is the Southern Baptist Convention's own confessional statement, first adopted in 1925 and revised in 1963 and again in 2000, and this record states that revision..."

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

This source names Baptist directly: "under the imprint of the American Baptist Publication Society."

Source The Baptist Hymnal, For Use In The Church And Home (Internet Archive)Internet Archive (digitized item record)

This source names Baptist directly: "own digitized item record for The Baptist Hymnal, for Use in the Church and Home, giving E."

Source The Baptist Hymnal, For Use In The Church And Home (Internet Archive)Internet Archive (digitized item record)

This source names Baptist directly: "Episcopal Church, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated, the National Baptist Convention of America, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the Church of God in Christ."

Source The Black Church in the African American ExperienceC. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya

This source names Baptist directly: "Stone but drawing Methodist and Baptist preachers as well, who sometimes preached simultaneously from separate stumps and wagons to different sections of the crowd, it became the largest and most..."

Source Encyclopedia of American ReligionsJ. Gordon Melton

This source names Baptist directly: "between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, God the Father above him and the Holy Spirit as a dove between them, surrounded by patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs seated on clouds."

This source names Baptist directly: "Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2024 and 2023, prepared with an unqualified opinion by Batts Morrison Wales & Lee, P.A."

This source names Baptist directly: "of Herod and the Beheading of the Baptist," by the Italian artist Giovanni Baronzio, ca."

This source names Baptist directly: "of Herod and the Beheading of the Baptist," a tempera on wood panel by the Italian artist Giovanni Baronzio, ca."

This source names Baptist directly: "for designing Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, and the 1993 discovery of 411 of his architectural printing plates."

Source The Legacy Of Pioneering African American Architect Wallace A. RayfieldNational Trust for Historic Preservation

This source names Baptist directly: "centered on veneration of John the Baptist and surviving today mainly among Iraqi and Iranian diaspora communities, written by a specialist in ancient and late antique religious movements."

Source The Mandaeans: The Last GnosticsEdmondo Lupieri

This source names Baptist directly: "the 1830s and early 1840s around the Baptist preacher William Miller's biblically calculated prediction that Christ would return between 1843 and 1844."

Source Encyclopedia of American ReligionsJ. Gordon Melton

This source names Baptist directly: "Faith is a primary nineteenth century Baptist confessional document, adopted by the New Hampshire Baptist Convention in 1833, and historically influential well beyond its own state as later Baptist..."

Source The New Hampshire Confession of FaithNew Hampshire Baptist Convention

This source names Baptist directly: "The Progressive Baptist Hymnal was published in 1976 in Washington, D.C."

This source names Baptist directly: "which compiles publication details for Baptist hymn books issued between 1951 and 2000."

This source names Baptist directly: "Baptist News Global, an independent religion news outlet unaffiliated with the United Methodist Church or any Methodist body, reporting the November 2025 ratification of the United Methodist..."

This source names Baptist directly: "Williamsburg's First Baptist Church, organised by enslaved and free Black worshippers around 1776, is among the oldest Black congregations in the country."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "company sponsored and independent Baptist and Methodist churches, shaped community life across the southern coalfields through the twentieth century, often the only social institution a mining town..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Baptist directly: "doctrinal statement of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated, published on the denomination's own website as its Articles of Faith."

Source What We Believe (National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated)National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated

This source names Baptist directly: "what it identifies as the American Baptist Churches USA General Board's own November 2005 amendment to the confessional document "We Are American Baptists": "A Biblical People: Who submit to the..."

This source names Baptist directly: "Wikipedia's article on Baptists, a continuously edited tertiary source with no fixed publication year, accessed 2026-08-20."

Source Wikipedia, Baptists (source)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baptist directly: "Edward the Confessor and by John the Baptist; the right panel shows the Virgin and Child surrounded by eleven angels, several wearing Richard's personal badge of a white hart, one holding a banner..."

Source Wilton Diptych (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

Contained In

A Protestant family.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Contains

Critiqued

Celibacy / Monasticism, Practices

There is no monastic life and no celibate clergy, and pastors ordinarily marry.

Confirmation, Rituals

There is no confirmation, since the profession of faith precedes baptism rather than following it years after.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Infant Baptism and Christening, Rituals

Baptism is for those who have professed faith, so the baptism of an infant is not a baptism at all and a person so treated is baptised on profession later. This is the point on which the tradition takes its name.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Seven Sacraments, Practices

Baptism and the Lord's Supper are two ordinances, not seven sacraments, and neither conveys grace.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Veneration of icons, Practices

The veneration of images is rejected outright.

Veneration of saints and Mary, Practices

Prayer is offered to God alone, and the saints are not asked to intercede.

Rejected Here

Papal primacy and infallibility, Doctrines

Baptists reject papal primacy, holding to the priesthood of all believers and the autonomy of the local congregation instead of any single earthly head of the church.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Purgatory, Doctrines

Baptists reject Purgatory; the two Baptist ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, are held to be symbolic acts of obedience, not means of grace or purification after death.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Baptists reject the Real Presence and transubstantiation; the Lord's Supper is a symbolic memorial act per the Baptist Faith and Message, Article VII.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Altar, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Baptist churches keep a communion table rather than an altar, because the supper is an ordinance remembered and not a sacrifice offered.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Bishop, Religious Roles & Titles

Baptist churches are congregational, and no officer outside the local congregation holds authority over it.

Baptist churches are gathered congregations, not territories, and associate voluntarily rather than under a bishop.

Baptist teaching recognises no state of life more perfect than any other and has never had vowed communities.

Monk, Religious Roles & Titles

Refused, since Baptist churches hold that no state of life is more consecrated than another and that the ordinary Christian calling is lived in the world.

Papacy, Religious Organization & Structure

Baptist polity holds each gathered congregation competent to govern itself under Christ, which leaves no room for an office ruling the whole church.

Parish, Religious Organization & Structure

A Baptist church is a congregation of professed believers who have chosen one another, which is precisely what a parish is not.

Priest, Religious Roles & Titles

Refused, on the ground that every believer has direct access to God and no mediating order stands between.

Raphael, Archangels

Baptist confessions follow the Reformed canon in excluding Tobit, so Raphael has no scriptural warrant in Baptist teaching.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The memorial view: the supper is an ordinance of remembrance rather than a means of grace conveying a presence.

Excluded from Canon

1 Esdras, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

2 Esdras, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 2 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

3 Maccabees, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

4 Maccabees, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 4 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Additions to Daniel, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Additions to Daniel, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Additions to Esther, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Additions to Esther, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Book of Baruch, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Book of Baruch, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Book of Judith, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Book of Judith, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Book of Tobit, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Book of Tobit, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Books of the Maccabees, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Books of the Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Letter of Jeremiah, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Letter of Jeremiah, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Prayer of Manasseh, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Prayer of Manasseh, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Psalm 151, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Psalm 151, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Wisdom of Sirach, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Wisdom of Sirach, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Wisdom of Solomon, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Wisdom of Solomon, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Holds Element

Sung as an invitation hymn at the close of the sermon, which is the moment Baptist worship is built toward.

The pastor of a Baptist congregation is called by that congregation and serves it, and his authority comes from that call rather than from an office above it.

Shape Note Singing, Sacred Sound

Sacred Harp singing spread through the Baptist South as a singing school held apart from Sunday worship, which is how it survived the arrival of the organ in the church.

The guarantee against an establishment of religion answers directly the disabilities Baptists had suffered in the colonies, and the tradition has defended it as a religious principle rather than only a civil one.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Baptist churches confess the Nicene faith in substance while holding that no council has authority over a gathered congregation, so the creed is received as testimony and never imposed as a term of communion.

Baptists were the decisive constituency for disestablishment in Virginia, and the refusal of any established church is a Baptist principle long before it is an American one.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Held Differently

Chalice, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Most Baptist congregations serve the cup in individual glasses rather than from a common chalice, a nineteenth century change that spread on hygienic grounds and settled into practice.

Deacon, Religious Roles & Titles

Baptist deacons are chosen by the congregation to serve it and to support the pastor. The office is not an order of ministry and confers no authority to preach or to administer the ordinances.

Faith, Virtues

Baptist confessions hold justification by faith alone, faith read as reliance on Christ rather than as an infused virtue perfected by charity.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Saint, Religious Roles & Titles

Baptist usage follows the New Testament in calling every believer a saint, so the word names the whole church rather than a class within it.

Atonement, Doctrines

Atonement for sin through Christ is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Predestination and free will, Doctrines

Why this is disputed. Baptists range from Calvinist to Arminian on predestination and free will; the Baptist Faith and Message affirms God's sovereign election alongside a full and free offer of the gospel, and named camps within the Baptist family read the balance differently.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Giving to the needy is treated as a duty of stewardship over what is held in trust from God.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Apocalypse, Doctrines

Apocalyptic and eschatological revelation is received as canonical and doctrinally significant across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Baptism, Rituals

Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water, and it is an ordinance rather than a sacrament: an act of obedience and a public testimony, not a means by which grace is conveyed.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

Baptism reserved for believers who can personally profess faith, by immersion, is the tradition's defining and namesake doctrine, per the Baptist Faith and Message.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Christian eschatology, the doctrine of last things, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition, though particulars vary.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Each local congregation is self-governing under Christ, with no bishop or higher court holding binding authority over it, per the Baptist Faith and Message.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Covenant, Doctrines

The biblical covenant tradition, old and new, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

Creation ex nihilo is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Clergy or specialist role within Baptist.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

A Baptist congregation founded in 1877, pastored by Martin Luther King Jr. from 1954 to 1960.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Kept as Resurrection Sunday. Baptist churches keep no liturgical calendar and no season of Lent, so the day stands on its own rather than closing a cycle.

A Baptist congregation founded in 1886, pastored by Martin Luther King Sr. and later co-pastored by Martin Luther King Jr.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Fasting, Practices

Fasting is practised without a calendar, appointed by a congregation or undertaken privately.

Foot washing is kept as a third ordinance by Free Will, Primitive and some other Baptist bodies, and not by the tradition as a whole.

Funeral Rites, Rituals

The funeral is a service of the congregation, plain in form, with no prayer offered for the dead.

Heresy, Doctrines

The concept of heresy as a formally rejected teaching is operative in this tradition's own doctrinal and disciplinary system.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Holy Orders, Rituals

A congregation calls and ordains its own pastor, and ordination confers no order and no authority beyond the congregation that gave it. The two scriptural offices are pastor and deacon.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Holy Spirit, Doctrines

The Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The hypostatic union of two natures in one person of Christ is affirmed per the Chalcedonian Definition, binding on this tradition.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account
Incarnation, Doctrines

The Incarnation, God the Son taking human nature, is affirmed per the Chalcedonian Definition, binding on this tradition.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Logos, Doctrines

The Logos Christology of John's Gospel prologue is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

Marriage is solemnised by the congregation's minister and is not held to be a sacrament.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention
Source Baptist Confessions of FaithWilliam L. Lumpkin

Twenty-seven-book New Testament canon, shared across Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant traditions alike, including this tradition.

Sunday is kept for worship as the Lord's Day, without a sabbatarian theory of it.

Omnipotence, Doctrines

God's omnipotence is affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

God's omnipresence is affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Omniscience, Doctrines

God's omniscience is affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Prayer, Practices

Prayer is ordinarily free rather than read, and the tradition has resisted set forms in public worship from the seventeenth century onward.

Prophecy, Doctrines

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)
Redemption, Doctrines

Redemption through Christ's sacrifice is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Salvation, Doctrines

Salvation through Christ is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition, though the mechanism of justification is debated separately.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

A Black Baptist congregation founded in 1873, a principal organizing site of the 1963 Birmingham civil rights campaign.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Sola Fide, Doctrines

The Baptist confessions follow the Reformed pattern here, holding that faith receives and rests on Christ's righteousness and is not itself the ground of acceptance.

Scripture is held as the sole authority for faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation rests on the claim that no other authority stands between the believer and the text.

Son of God, Doctrines

Christ as the Son of God is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

The confessional statement of the Southern Baptist Convention. Other Baptist bodies in the United States do not use it and several were formed by people who declined it.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

The Baptist confessions of the seventeenth century follow the Western creed on the procession of the Spirit, taking that article over from the Westminster Confession unchanged.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Kingdom of God, present and coming, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

A final judgment of all people at Christ's return is held, with the outcome settled by the relation to Christ established in this life.

The Lord's Prayer is taught and used, though the tradition's preference for free prayer means it is recited far less often in public worship than in the liturgical churches.

The most widely used Baptist confession of the nineteenth century, presented in 1833 and expanded in 1853, adopted directly or in edited form by several Baptist bodies and used as the model for others.

Source The New Hampshire Confession of FaithNew Hampshire Baptist Convention

Every believer is held competent to approach God directly and to read scripture without a mediating clergy, which is the ground of the congregational polity this body keeps.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The virgin birth of Christ is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

The words of institution are read as the warrant for the Supper, which is a memorial act of obedience.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

The problem of evil is a live theological question this tradition addresses within classical theism.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Tithing, Practices

The tithe is taught and expected far more explicitly here than in the older Western churches, and is the ordinary basis on which a congregation supports itself and its missionaries.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

God's transcendence and immanence are affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

A Baptist congregation organized in 1839 on a free, unassigned seating policy associated with its early reputation for racial integration.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Trinity, Doctrines

The doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three persons, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Position On

Dispensational premillennialism, widely held across the American bodies though not confessed by all of them.

Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. BaptistsView the Source
2. Resolution On Racial Reconciliation On The 150th Anniversary Of The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC.net, 1995)
Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Convention, 1995the holders' own accountView the Source
3. The Baptist Faith and Message
Southern Baptist Convention, 2000the stated position on sexuality and its supporting detail, the Southern Baptist Convention's readingView the Source
4. Where Does American Baptist Churches USA Stand on Sex, Abortion, and Decline? (Juicy Ecumenism)
Juicy Ecumenism (Institute on Religion and Democracy), 2018the stated position on sexuality and its supporting detail, American Baptist Churches USA's readingView the Source
5. Baptists Believe in Church Autonomy (Center for Baptist History and Heritage, Dallas Baptist University)
Center for Baptist History and Heritage, Dallas Baptist UniversityView the Source
6. Wikipedia, Baptists (source)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
7. Resolution On The Autonomy Of Baptist Churches And General Baptist Bodies (Southern Baptist Convention, 1992)
Southern Baptist Convention, 1992Resolution body, 1992
Quote, Resolution body, 1992
The local Baptist congregation is understood as autonomous, with full power and authority to conduct its own affairs, free from any power of coercion by other local churches or any general Baptist body.
the holders' own accountView the Source
8. Baptist World Alliance
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Quote, Lead section
The Baptist World Alliance is an international communion of Baptists, with an estimated 53 million people from 283 member bodies in 138 countries and territories as of 2025.
View the Source
9. Baptist World Alliance Membership Information and 2025 Census
Baptist World Alliance, Baptist World Alliance, 2025View the Source
Baptist Confessions of Faith
William L. Lumpkin, Judson Press, 1959View the Source
The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes
Philip Schaff, Harper and Brothers, 1877Introduction
Quote, Introduction
A Creed, or Rule of Faith, or Symbol, is a confession of faith for public use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief, which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of the Christian Church.
View the Source
Stances of Faiths on LGBTQ Plus Issues: National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. (Human Rights Campaign)
Human Rights Campaignthe stated position on sexuality and its supporting detail, the National Baptist Convention USA Incorporated's readingView the Source
The Holy Bible
Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 1611Acts 2 and Romans 6
Quote, Acts 2 and Romans 6
Baptists argue believer's baptism from the pattern of profession preceding baptism in the New Testament.
View the Source
Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical Biography
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford UniversityView the Source
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