Baptists form a major branch of evangelical Protestantism distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency, sola fide, sola scriptura and congregationalist church government. Baptists generally recognize two ordinances: baptism and communion.
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. In 1845 the Southern Baptists separated from the Triennial Convention in order to support slavery, which the southern churches regarded as "an institution of heaven". During the 19th and most of the 20th century, it played a central role in Southern racial attitudes, supporting racial segregation and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy while opposing interracial marriage. In 1995, the organization apologized for its history. Since the 1940s, it has spread across the United States, having member churches across the country and 41 affiliated state conventions.
The Restoration Movement is a Christian movement that began on the United States frontier during the Second Great Awakening (1790–1840) of the early 19th century. The pioneers of this movement were seeking to reform the church from within and sought "the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament."
Independent Baptist churches are Christian congregations, generally holding to conservative Baptist beliefs. Although some Independent Baptist churches refuse affiliation with Baptist denominations, various Independent Baptist Church denominations have been founded.
Reformed Baptists, Particular Baptists and Calvinistic Baptists, are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology. Depending on the denomination, Calvinistic Baptists adhere to varying degrees of Reformed theology, ranging from simply embracing the Five Points of Calvinism, to accepting a modified form of federalism; all Calvinistic Baptists reject the classical Reformed teaching on infant baptism as a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. The first Calvinistic Baptist church was formed in the 1630s. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith is a significant summary of the beliefs of Reformed Baptists. The name "Reformed Baptist" dates from the latter part of the 20th century to denote Baptists who retained Baptist ecclesiology, and reaffirmed more historic Baptist biblical theology, such as Covenant theology.
The American Baptist Association (ABA) is an Independent Baptist Christian denomination in the United States. The headquarters is in Texarkana, Texas. The principal founder was Ben M. Bogard, a pastor of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. ABA headquarters, including its bookstore and publishing house, Bogard Press, is based in Texarkana, Texas.
The Baptist Missionary Association of America (BMAA) is a fellowship of Independent Baptist churches. Historically, churches within the BMAA have generally been associated with theological conservatism and the Landmarkism movement.
Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists are part of a larger sub-group of Baptists that is commonly referred to as "anti-mission" Baptists. This sub-group includes the Duck River and Kindred Baptists, Old Regular Baptists, some Regular Baptists and some United Baptists. Only a minuscule minority of Primitive Baptists adhere to the Two-Seed doctrine. The primary centers of Two-Seedism were in Northern Alabama, Arkansas, Eastern Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, and Texas. As of 2002, five churches or congregations of this faith and order still existed in Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas.
Primitive Baptists – also known as Regular Baptists, Old School Baptists, Foot Washing Baptists, or, derisively, Hard Shell Baptists – are conservative Baptists adhering to a degree of Calvinist beliefs who coalesced out of the controversy among Baptists in the early 19th century over the appropriateness of mission boards, tract societies, and temperance societies. Primitive Baptists are a subset of the Calvinistic Baptist tradition. The adjective "primitive" in the name is used in the sense of "original".
The National Association of Free Will Baptists (NAFWB) is a national body of Free Will Baptist churches in the United States and Canada, organized on November 5, 1935 in Nashville, Tennessee. The Association traces its history in the United States through two different lines: one beginning in the South in 1727 and another in the North in 1780. The "Palmer line," however, never developed as a formal denomination. It consisted of only about three churches in North Carolina. The NAFWB is the largest of the Free Will Baptist denominations.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT), more commonly known as the Texas Baptists, is a Baptist Christian denomination in the U.S. state of Texas. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance. Texas Baptist offices are located in the city of Dallas, though convention staff are located across the state. According to a denomination census released in 2023, it claimed 2,038,53 members and 5,375 churches
Joshua Lawrence (1778–1843), of Tarboro, North Carolina, was an influential Baptist minister in the eastern United States during the Baptist missions controversy in the early 19th century.
A Christian mission is an organized effort to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as educational or hospital work, in the name of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries. Sometimes individuals are sent and are called missionaries, and historically may have been based in mission stations. When groups are sent, they are often called mission teams and they undertake mission trips. There are a few different kinds of mission trips: short-term, long-term, relational and those that simply help people in need. Some people choose to dedicate their whole lives to mission.
Landmarkism, sometimes called Baptist bride theology, is a Baptist ecclesiology that emerged in the mid-19th century in the American South. It upholds the perpetuity theory of Baptist origins, which asserts an unbroken continuity and exclusive legitimacy of the Baptist movement since the apostolic period. Landmarkists hold a firm belief in the exclusive validity of Baptist churches and view non-Baptist liturgical forms and practices as invalid. This perspective caused significant controversy and division within the Baptist community, leading to intense debates and numerous schisms.
Approximately 15.3% of Americans identify as Baptist, making Baptists the second-largest religious group in the United States, after Roman Catholics. Baptists adhere to a congregationalist structure, so local church congregations are generally self-regulating and autonomous, meaning that their broadly Christian religious beliefs can and do vary. Baptists make up a significant portion of evangelicals in the United States and approximately one third of all Protestants in the United States. Divisions among Baptists have resulted in numerous Baptist bodies, some with long histories and others more recently organized. There are also many Baptists operating independently or practicing their faith in entirely independent congregations.
The Triennial Convention was the first national Baptist denomination in the United States. Officially named the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions, it was formed in 1814 to advance missionary work and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In a dispute over slavery and missions policy, Baptist churches in the South separated from the Triennial Convention and established the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. This split left the Triennial Convention largely Northern in membership. In 1907, the Triennial Convention was reorganized into the Northern Baptist Convention, which was renamed American Baptist Churches USA in 1972.
Daniel Parker was an American minister in the Primitive Baptist Church in the Southern United States and the founder of numerous churches including Pilgrim Primitive Baptist Church at Elkhart, Texas, the location of the Parker family cemetery. As an elder, Parker led a group who separated from that church and formed the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists. Parker is one of the earliest documented proponents of the doctrine of Serpent Seed among Protestant Christianity.
Characteristic of Christianity in the 19th century were evangelical revivals in some largely Protestant countries and later the effects of modern biblical scholarship on the churches. Liberal or modernist theology was one consequence of this. In Europe, the Roman Catholic Church strongly opposed liberalism and culture wars launched in Germany, Italy, Belgium and France. It strongly emphasized personal piety. In Europe there was a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. In Protestantism, pietistic revivals were common.
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