Read complete books and articles on: Southern Baptist Convention

Baptists - denomination of Protestant Christians holding a distinctive belief with regard to the ordinance of baptism. Since 1644 the name has been applied to those who maintain that baptism should be administered to none but believers and that immersion is the only mode of administering baptism indicated in the New Testament. The doctrine and practices of some earlier bodies, such as the

Organization and Churches

Baptist churches are congregational in matters of government. Such general associations as are formed do not have control over the individual churches. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest body of churches, with about 16 million members (1997). The original national organization of black Baptist churches is the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A.; it has about 8.2 million members (1992). Other large Baptist churches in the United States include the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A, the largely black National Baptist Convention of America (separated from the National Baptist Convention), and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. The Baptist World Alliance was formed in 1905 as an alliance of Baptist churches from around the world. Today the convention includes 192 unions and conventions with a combined membership of about 42 million (1999).

History of the Baptist Churches

In Holland a group of English separatists, led by John Smyth, came under Mennonite influence and formed c.1608 in Amsterdam the first English Baptist congregation. Smyth baptized first himself, then the others. In 1611 certain members of this congregation returned to London and established a church there. This was the first of the churches afterward known as General Baptists, since they held the Arminian belief that the atonement of Jesus is not limited to the elect only but is general.

In 1633 the Particular Baptists were founded. They were a group whose Calvinistic doctrine taught that atonement is particular or individual. Immersion was not yet insisted upon in these churches, but in 1644 seven Particular Baptist churches issued a confession of faith requiring that form of baptism, and Baptist was thenceforth the name given to those who practiced it. In 1891, General and Particular Baptists united into a single body called the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland.

In America it was Baptists of the Particular type that first gained influence among the Puritans and Calvinists, when Roger Williams and his companions in Rhode Island rejected infant baptism and established a church in 1639 based on the individual profession of faith. Baptists were later persecuted in New England for opposing infant baptism, and one group emigrated c.1684 from Maine to Charleston, S.C. A group of Separate Congregationalists from New England under Shubael Stearns and Daniel Marshall established (1755) the Separate Baptists in Sandy Creek, N.C.

In the Southeast the General Baptist views found acceptance, but the stricter Calvinistic ideas suited the pioneers who settled the southern mountains after the Revolution. Their opposition to mission work gave them the name Anti-Mission. They were also called Hard Shell or Primitive Baptists.

Early missionary activity extended the Baptist movement to the Continent and elsewhere. In the United States the American Baptist Missionary Union (under a longer title) was formed in 1814 to support workers in foreign lands. In 1832 the American Baptist Home Mission Society was organized. When the question of slavery became a dividing wall, the Southern Baptist Convention was established (1845).

Bibliography

See J. E. Tull, Shapers of Baptist Thought (1972); L. Davis, Immigrants, Baptists, and the Protestant Mind in America (1973); R. G. Torbet, A History of the Baptists (4th ed. 1975); W. H. Brachney, The Baptists (1988).

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10 of the Best Books and Articles on: Southern Baptist Convention

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 » Read Now
by Paul Harvey. 330 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

"(Harvey) recognizes that there are two centers, the white religious formation and the black religious formation. This book tells the two stories as they unfolded in the New South era, proving that they were (and always have been) interactive and intertwined". Samuel S. Hill., University of Florida...
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"(Harvey) recognizes that there are two centers, the white religious formation and the black religious formation. This book tells the two stories as they unfolded in the New South era, proving that they were (and always have been) interactive and intertwined". Samuel S. Hill., University of Florida
Black Baptists, white Baptists, and the shaping of southern religion and culture
Together, and separately, black and white Baptists created different but intertwined cultures that profoundly shaped the South. Adopting a biracial and bicultural focus, Paul Harvey works to redefine southern religious history, and by extension southern culture, as the product of such interaction -- the result of whites and blacks having drawn from and influenced each other even while remaining separate and distinct.
Harvey explores the parallels and divergences of black and white religious institutions as manifested through differences in worship styles, sacred music, and political agendas. He examines the relationship of broad social phenomena like progressivism and modernization to the development of southern religion, focusing on the clash between rural southern folk religious expression and models of spiritually, drawn from northern Victorian standards.
In tracing the growth of Baptist churches from small outposts of radically democratic plain-folk religion in the mid-eighteenth century to conservative and culturally dominant institutions in the twentieth century, Harvey explores one of the most impressive evolutions of American religious and cultural history.
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2.

Southern Baptist Politics: Authority and Power in the Restructuring of an American Denomination » Read Now
by Arthur Emery Farnsley II. 151 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Unlike, other recent studies of the Southern Baptists, Southern Baptist Politics was written after the culmination of the 'Baptist battles' of the 1980s, when fundamentalists has effectively taken control of the denomination. It also considers the Southern Baptist Convention not simply as a...
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Unlike, other recent studies of the Southern Baptists, Southern Baptist Politics was written after the culmination of the 'Baptist battles' of the 1980s, when fundamentalists has effectively taken control of the denomination. It also considers the Southern Baptist Convention not simply as a denomination but as an organization with characteristics similar to other voluntary associations in American society-an approach that promises to be useful for the study of other religious groups in America. Arthur Farnsley concludes that the SBC, as an American denomination, had within itself the seeds of pragmatism and individualism that characterize most American voluntary organizations.
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3.

Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 » Read Now
by Gregory A. Wills. 198 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person...
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No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person. Paradoxically no denomination could wield religious authority as zealously as the Baptists. Between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace an exclusivist spirituality--a spirituality that continues to shape Southern Baptist churches in contemporary conflicts between moderates who urge tolerance and conservatives who require belief in scriptural inerrancy. Wills's analysis advances our understanding of the interaction between democracy and religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as to Baptist observers.
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4.

"How to Win the Jews for Christ": Southern Jewishness and the Southern Baptist Convention, in The Mississippi Quarterly » Read Now
by Eliza Russi Lowen McGraw. 15 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

...Southern Jewishness and the Southern Baptist Convention(*). by ELIZA RUSSI...Jewish conversion. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) strives to contain...call on members...
5.

Will the Real Southern Baptist Please Stand Up: Methodological Problems in Surveying Southern Baptist Congregations and Members, in Review of Religious Research » Read Now
by C. Kirk Hadaway. 13 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention Review of Religious...conduct research within the Southern Baptist Convention can be traced, at least...episcopal...
6.

The Impact of New Church Development on Southern Baptist Growth, in Review of Religious Research » Read Now
by C. Kirk Hadaway. 10 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention Review of Religious...churches in the growth of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was found that newer...lead to...
7.

Southern Baptists and the New Christian Right, in Review of Religious Research » Read Now
by Nancy T. Ammerran. 24 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...generally conservative--the Southern Baptist Convention--there are significant...fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist Convention is strongly related to...one...
8.

All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism ("The Southern Baptist Convention" begins on p. 144) » Read Now
by Marsha G. Witten. 175 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...Church U.S.A. and the Southern Baptist Convention who responded to my request...Church U.S.A. and the Southern Baptist Convention. I focus on the religious...Church U.S.A...
9.

Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (discussion of the Southern Baptist Convention begins on p. 37) » Read Now
by C. Allyn Russell. 306 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...when separated from the Southern Baptist Convention for reasons to be discussed...denominationalism in general and the Southern Baptist Convention in particular. It...
10.

Religion and the American Civil War (discussion of the Southern Baptist Convention begins on p. 169) » Read Now
by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, Charles Reagan Wilson. 434 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

The sixteen essays in this volume, all previously unpublished, address the little considered question of the role played by religion in the American Civil War. The authors show that religion, understood in its broadest context, as a culture and community of faith, was found wherever the war was...
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The sixteen essays in this volume, all previously unpublished, address the little considered question of the role played by religion in the American Civil War. The authors show that religion, understood in its broadest context, as a culture and community of faith, was found wherever the war was found. Comprising essays by such scholars as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Drew Galpin Faust, Mark Noll, Reid Mitchell, Harry Stout, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and featuring an Afterword by James McPherson, this collection marks the first step towards uncovering this crucial yet neglected aspect of American history.
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