Trail Markers
Revolution and Revival - The Baptist Story
March 2009
The year 2009 is the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the modern Baptist movement.
Baptists began as a group of Separatists, or nonconformists, who set themselves apart from the Church of England. The Separatists believed the established church was not being true to the teachings of the Bible; they felt that a church should consist only of believers and not consider every citizen in the nation to be “Christian.” In addition, they wanted to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, without restrictions from the king, the Parliament, or the Anglican Church.
The government authorities did not take kindly to these radicals; from Gainsborough, England, a small congregation of Separatists led by John Smyth fled to Holland for refuge. There, Smyth came under the influence of Mennonites and embraced the principle of a church made up of baptized believers only. In late 1608 or early 1609, Smyth himself was baptized. Afterward, he baptized Thomas Helwys, the leader of the Separatists group at the time, along with about 40 other members of the refugee congregation. This small group came to be called “Baptists.”
In 1611, 10 members of the group returned to England to establish what became the first church of the General Baptist Association. They believed in a general atonement—that Christ died for all people. In 1638, another Baptist group was formed, known as the “Particular Baptists,” who believed that Jesus died only for the elect—particular persons who were “chosen” to be saved.
Around 1638 or 1639, the first Baptist church in North America was founded in Rhode Island under the leadership of Roger Williams. Williams, who had arrived from England with Separatist convictions, was known as a champion of religious freedom. He came into conflict with Dr. John Cotton, the Puritan pastor of the First Congregational Church of Boston. Cotton considered the Massachusetts Bay Colony the New Israel and called the American Indians Amalekites, which he felt justified the colonists killing them and taking their land.
Williams opposed Cotton and his church’s interpretations of the Bible, pointing out that in Scripture the new Israel was to consist of only born-again believers. Because of his views, Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He found refuge among the Indians, from whom he purchased land and, in 1636, established Providence, R.I., with a mandate that made it the first government in the world to separate church and state and to guarantee complete religious freedom.
From these small beginnings, the Baptists through four centuries have grown; today the Baptist World Alliance, a global fellowship of 214 Baptist conventions, comprises a membership of 36 million baptized believers.
The heritage of the Baptist General Conference also arises out of the nonconformist, separatist movement, which in Europe was called the Free Church Movement. These communities of believers declared themselves free from the institutional (state) churches. In Sweden, the state and church were considered as one, so when a child was born, he or she became not only a citizen of the state, but also was baptized (sprinkled) into the Christian faith and became a member of the church.
Independent assemblies, which freed themselves from the state church, believed that the church should consist only of believers who voluntarily were baptized on the basis of their confession of faith.
Pietists, small cells of believers (called “conventicles”) who gathered to read the Bible, had a profound influence on the Free Church Movement in Sweden. They came to be known as Lasares (Readers), and challenged the state (Lutheran) church for including both saved and unsaved members. When the Baptist ideas began to spread, many of these pietist separatists accepted the Baptist principle of a free church consisting only of baptized believers.
Frederick Olaus Nilsson, a leader in pietist circles, traveled to Hamburg, Germany, to be baptized by the pioneer Baptist preacher, John Gerhard Oncken. Nilsson was not only baptized, but he was also ordained as a Baptist minister, authorized to baptize believers and plant new Baptist churches. He returned to Sweden and on September 21, 1848, baptized four men and one woman in the Gulf of Cattegat, off the shores of southwestern Sweden.
Nilsson was viewed not only as a religious heretic but as a traitor to the state. When this newly formed Baptist group refused to have their children baptized by a priest of the state church, the act was viewed as a rejection not only of citizenship in the kingdom of God, (the church), but also of their Swedish citizenship. Persecution followed. In 1850, F. O. Nilsson, then the leader of a growing number of Baptist churches in Sweden, was tried in high court as a heretic and a danger to Sweden. The sentence? Banishment from the country. This led him to America and, ultimately, to Minnesota.
Religious intolerance against the Separatists became so severe that large numbers fled to America in the mid-19th century. A Lasare pietist group in northern Sweden decided to emigrate to America around this time. Gustav Palmquist, a school teacher and member of the Lasare fellowship in Stockholm, was chosen as the spiritual leader of this group. The group sailed to the New World ahead of Palmquist, so when he later arrived in New York City, he discovered that his refugee congregation had split to head to several western locations. Palmquist made his way west to connect with a large group of Swedish immigrants in Illinois as he had heard that there was a revival going on at the Salisbury Baptist Church in Galesburg, Ill.
While Palmquist had been with F. O. Nilsson in Sweden, he had never actually been in a Baptist church. Attending the church in Galesburg, Palmquist converted to the Baptist theology and was baptized one Sunday in June 1852. The church elders immediately ordained him to be an evangelist in order to win his fellow Swedes to Christ.
Palmquist set out for Rock Island, Ill., and found some Swedish immigrants to whom he preached the gospel of saving grace; on August 8, 1852, he baptized two men and one woman in the Mississippi River. Five days later, this small core of baptized believers organized themselves as a Swedish Baptist Church.
On this 400th anniversary of the beginning of the Baptist movement, more than 150 years since that small band of Swedish immigrants began their mission to win Swedes to Christ, we reflect and rejoice in the roots of our Baptist beginnings.
In recent years, the name “Baptist” has sometimes been associated with a group of Baptists who subscribe to exclusivity in fellowship and teaching, and whom many have considered to be “narrow-minded.” Consequently, many Baptist General Conference churches have dropped “Baptist” from their names and chosen titles that would be seen as more “user friendly” in the communities where they seek to minister.
Seventy years ago, the Swedish Baptist General Conference dropped the word “Swedish” from its title to become the Baptist General Conference. Within a few years, the Swedish language had been lost as the language of worship in the churches. Leaders began to rise in the conference who had little or no Swedish heritage. Today, there exists a wide variety of national, ethnic churches listed in the membership of the BGC—Filipino-American churches, African American churches, Vietnamese churches, Native American churches, Chinese churches, Japanese churches, Haitian churches, and Latin/Hispanic churches.
This Baptist General Conference fellowship has expanded into 14 districts across the United States, and in every district church growth has been phenomenal. One hundred and fifty missionaries and international servants are active in Central America; South America; Southeast Asia; China; India; Arab-speaking nations; and North, East, and West African nations. In addition to these missionaries, there are many others supported by BGC churches who are serving through parachurch and interdenominational mission agencies.
Yet with all the rapid changes taking place in the BGC, the importance of being “Baptist” should not be forgotten. Converge Worldwide has an informational webpage about the BGC that features the 400th Anniversary of the Baptist beginnings in 1609. Churches are encouraged to obtain bulletin inserts that relate stories about famous Baptists and of important events in Baptist history. There is also a written and pictorial history of the Baptist General Conference available at www.scene3.org/content/view/8060/68/.
Through the past four centuries, Baptists have struggled and suffered, but have remained true to the principles identifying them as Baptists. The time has come to renew not only the name “Baptist,” but also to regain our understanding of the historic principles for which we as a group of believers have suffered harassment, imprisonment, beatings, banishment, and sometimes, death. The story of our Baptist history is truly a great heritage.