The Baptist Heritage
                                Session Two
                         Early Baptists in America

copywrite John Berggren 1997

John Smyth began the first modern Baptist church in 1609. This first
Baptist church was had split away from a group of Puritans led by John
Robinson. Robinson fellowship of Puritans returned to England. In 1620
they boarded the Mayflower to sail to the New World. They established the
Plymouth colony on Massachusetts Bay. Though the puritans believed the
church of England corrupt, they had not fully split from it. they expected
that the Puritan movement, which was growing, would rule i both England
and in the colonies.
Other Puritans came and settled in the Massachusetts area forming new
colonies. After eleven years, one English Puritan decided that he too must
make the journey to America. Though he was ordained in the church of
England he had come to the conclusion that church was so corrupt it could
not be made pure. His beliefs led him to oppose the idea of a National
church, the rituals, and the office of Bishop. Many of his fellow Puritans
were aghast at the idea of leaving the communion of the national Church.
Thus it was that Roger Williams decided the colonies might be a better
place for his ministry. Seeking soul freedom, Roger and his wife Mary
boarded the ship, Lyon, and sailed to Boston. They arrived in Boston in
February of 1631.
Roger Williams soon became a teacher at the Boston Church. Even in
Boston his views demanding separation from the Church of England were
seen as too severe. Then Williams began teaching that civil magistrates had
no authority to punish violations of the first four of the Ten
Commandments. This teaching shook the very foundations of the colony.
Massachusetts was in many ways a theocracy. The Puritans demanded
uniformity of faith by all citizens. They had, they believed, the true word of
God and were sure they were right in enforcing their doctrine and practice
on all who lived in the community. When Williams began teaching that the
magistrate could not act against heresy, idolatry, blasphemy and Sabbath
breaking they knew it was time for him to leave.
Thus it was that Roger Williams moved to Salem. In Salem he became an
assistant minister. He also began doing missionary work among the Indians.
One way he would later upset the authorities was when he began teaching
that the settlers had no rights to the land unless they purchased it at a fair
price. Williams took the trouble to learn the language of the people among
whom they had come to settle. He became a friend to the Sachems,
especially Massasiot.
By the Summer of 1635, Williams had worn out his welcome in
Massachusetts. He was summoned before the General Court of the Bay
Colony. In October, he was given six weeks to leave the colony. This order
was changed to allow him to wait until Spring. Then the Magistrates heard
Williams was preaching in his home and decided to arrest him and place
him on a ship to England.
In January of 1636 Roger Williams fled from the colony to the hospitality
of his Indian friends. He had been banished by fear. The leaders of
Massachusetts feared him as a menace to the church-state, the New Israel
which they, who thought themselves the elect of God, were building. Those
who banished him were right. Roger Williams teaching sowed the seeds of
the destruction of the alliance of Church and State in our nation.
Later in 1636 Roger Williams and five followers took their families to
form a new settlement. they bought land from the Narragansett sachems.
They named their new settlement Providence. As more people fled from
Puritan religious persecution the settlement grew. By the end of 1638 the
town had 85 residents.
Williams thought of his settlement as a shelter from those who were
oppressed for conscience. He planned a governments of majority rule, but
only in civil things. The individual's freedom of conscience was considered
an inherent right.
In all this time there was still no Baptist church in America. Roger
Williams remained, for the while, a Puritan. Even before he was banished
form the Bay Colony, however, Williams was tending toward what the
authorities called "anabaptistry." He had much in common with the Baptists.
He agreed with them that the state had no right to control belief and
worship. He stood for the full autonomy of the local congregation. It was
natural for him to be attracted toward a group which preached the Gospel
of love, hated and avoided persecution, and upheld as supreme the rights of
conscience.
In March of 1639, Roger Williams was rebaptized by Ezekiel Holliman.
then, having been baptized as a believer, he rebaptized Holliman and ten
others. This first small group of Baptists met in the homes of its members.
It would be decades before they built a meeting house. This church, the
First Baptist Church of Providence, is still an active part of the American
Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.
Williams pastored this church for several months. Then he left the
Baptists in a continuing search for an approach to worship and faith which
would satisfy the need of his soul.
One church in our country contests the claim of the Providence church to
be the oldest Baptist church in the nation. John Clark, another man whose
religious views earned the hostility of the Bay Colony, moved to Providence
in 1638. He then started a settlement in what is now Newport RI. In 1638
he also founded a church there. Historians believe that the church did not
become a Baptist Church until 1648 however.
New England did not provide fertile soil for the growth of the Baptist
movement. On young man explained the colonies position. "We ask no man
to come here. We warn him that unless he is one of us he had better stay
away. If he comes, he must do as we do." Religious dissent was stifled in
these northern colonies. By 1700 there were only ten Baptist churches in all
of New England with a total membership of about 300. The area remained
strongly Puritan. The churches would later be known and Presbyterian and
Congregational. The southern colonies did not provide for growth of the
movement for another reason. They were not colonized for religious reasons
and the settlers remained for the most part Anglican (now Episcopalian.)
It was the middle colonies that saw the greatest Baptist growth. In them
freedom could flourish. New Jersey and Pennsylvania were settled by
Quakers. The Quakers believed in religious liberty just as strongly as the
Baptists. William Penn gave an invitation to persons of various beliefs and
received colonists from the European continent as well as from England.
Having a more diverse culture, these middle colonies allowed for greater
variety of belief and practice.
In 1684, the Baptist church in Newport RI sponsored a mission church in
Cold Springs, Pennsylvania. This church only remained in existence for 18
years. Still, it was the beginning of Baptist work in Pennsylvania and in a
real way the beginning of Baptist growth in America.
Elias Keech came to Philadelphia from London in 1688. His father was a
well known Baptist minister in England. In fact, his father is remembered
for the radical innovation he introduced to the church in 1640,
congregational singing. Elias, a young man of twenty, thought it would be
fun to dress as a minister in the new land. Because of his imposture and his
father's reputation he received several invitations to preach. At his first
service his conscience compelled him to confess that he was no minister but
merely wore the garb.
The pastor of the Cold Springs church led him to Christ. Then he began
to preach in earnest. Soon he built up a circuit of five congregations. Out of
those congregations, five years after the Cold Springs church had ceased to
exist, came the Philadelphia association, formed in 1707. The Cold Springs
church was gone but it had provided the base for the growth for the Baptist
movement in our land.
The Philadelphia Association was the first of a long line of Baptist
Associations in America. It set the pattern of organization for Baptists for
over 200 years. Though we now use the terms "Area" and "Region" rather
than Association, these groupings of churches still perform many of the
same functions the Associations that preceded them did. 
The Association in Philadelphia was loose in structure. It had no power
or authority to bind the churches composing it. The only discipline it could
impose upon a church was to exclude that church from the Association if it
deviated in faith or practice. This was more to protect the integrity of the
Association than a method of discipline. The Association acted as an
advisory council in matters of local concern and was regarded as an
expression of the local church through which the mind of Christ might be
known. It also acted as an ordination council and disciplined ministers.
In 1742, the Association had twenty nine member congregations and over
4,000 members. In that year it officially adopted the London Confession of
Faith which the Particular Baptists adopted in 1644. Adopting the
confession had several results. First, by so doing the Philadelphia
Association took the Calvinist position as their official doctrinal stand. Then
too, it meant they had taken an official doctrinal stand. This meant the
General Baptists would find it necessary to stay separate from the
Association in order to continue their work. This adopting of a doctrinal
statement led to a continued split in Baptist ranks which would not be
healed until the Northern Baptist - Free Will Baptist merger in 1911.
The Association, being able to draw on the combined efforts and support
of many churches was effective in mission work throughout the colonies.
Most of the churches formed through that work joined together in
Associations. Other Baptists, seeing the effectiveness of the Association also
adopted that form of co-operation. Still, even though they worked together,
these early Baptist remembered that the local church is the particular
manifestation of Christ's body here on earth. The church was always to
them a local, autonomous entity. It works in cooperation with other
churches but there can be no such thing as a national, or international,
Baptist Church. This is reflected in the name of our denomination. The
American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. not the American Baptist Church