The Encyclopedia of World Religions

46 S Baptist churches

In the mid-17th century, church leaders like Thomas Helwys and John Smyth reacted against this situation. In their eyes, the institution of the state church meant that a person’s commitment to Christianity was not very serious. They began to preach that only believers should be baptized. They also began to insist that the relationship between believers and G OD was a private one. Government should have nothing to do with it. The Baptists had their greatest success in the North American colonies of Great Britain and, after the Revolutionary War, in the United States. Sev eral distinct movements have shaped the Ameri can Baptist churches. These include evangelism, abolitionism, modernism, and FUNDAMENTALISM . In the 18th century the Baptist churches embraced the evangelistic movement ( see E VAN GELICAL C HRISTIANITY and F UNDAMENTALISM , C HRIS TIAN ). This movement sought to instill in people a fervent, heartfelt faith in Jesus. It emphasized the need for conversion and a personal experience of SALVATION . In order to reach the people who most needed to hear this message, preachers left church buildings behind and held public meetings known as revivals. Baptists adopted these methods enthu siastically. As a result, they found many adherents, especially in the Old South and on the frontiers. In addition, they attracted a large number of African Americans, both free and slave. In the mid-19th century, the Baptist churches split over the issue of slavery. They formed two major “Conventions,” the Northern, which favored abolishing slavery, and the Southern, which favored keeping it. For a variety of reasons, the Southern Baptist Convention was more success ful. Today Southern Baptists outnumber any other Baptist group. Toward the end of the 19th century North Americans became aware of a movement called modernism. This movement applied critical meth ods to the study of the B IBLE . It also generally favored an active agenda of social reform. Several prominent Baptists, such as the preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick and the biblical scholar Shailer Matthews, assumed leadership roles in the mod ernist movement.

requires total immersion. They have argued over such details as the number of times a person has to be immersed and whether or not a person must go into the water face first. Christians also disagree about how baptism works. Christians who bap tize infants generally insist that in baptism God is active: His Holy Spirit stirs within the heart of the baptized person. Other Christians insist that bap tism simply recognizes publicly a change that has already taken place in a person’s heart. In any case, Christians generally see baptism as a rebirth. Those baptized die to an old life and rise to a new one. This symbolism is in fact com mon in rites of passage. The N EW T ESTAMENT con nects the dying and rising of baptism with the death and RESURRECTION of Jesus. Baptist churches A variety of P ROTESTANTISM especially common in the United States. Bap tists accept only “believer’s BAPTISM ,” that is, the baptism of those who have personally accepted C HRIST . Traditionally they have also been some of the strongest advocates of a separation of CHURCH AND STATE . HISTORY The Baptist churches resemble the Anabaptists of the Protestant R EFORMATION in one very important respect: Both groups have insisted that only those persons should be baptized who were old enough to decide that they wanted to be baptized. The Ana baptists, however, arose on the European continent in the 16th century. They were the ancestors of the M ENNONITES and the A MISH . The Baptist churches arose in the British Isles in the 17th century. They developed in quite a different direction. At the beginning of the 17th century, people living in England generally thought that C HRISTI ANITY should be a state church, that is, a religion that the government officially accepted and pro moted. This was the view held by Roman Catho lics and Puritans as much as by Anglicans ( see A NGLICANISM and P URITANISM ). In the setting of a state church, people were baptized as a matter of routine at birth.