What Are the Baptists?

Baptists are one among a number of movements within protestantism. But who are they and when did they start?

In the 1500s, Martin Luther had made a break with the Roman Catholic Church, leading to the Protestant Reformation. At the time England was Roman Catholic. Through some circumstances, that we don’t need to go into here, the church in England broke with the Roman Catholic Church and created its own church, the Church of England (Anglican).

While the Anglicans were protestant, there were many that felt that the established church had not gone far enough in its break with Rome. Even today, there is much in common between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches.

Some of those who were dissatisfied became the Puritans and others became the Separatists, because they separated from the established church. These Separatists are the ancestors of the Baptists.

The first Baptist church appeared in Amsterdam in 1609, led by English Separatists who had fled the religious conflict that was taking place in their home country. Their leader was John Smyth. Thomas Helwys took the group back to England in 1611 (the same year that the King James Bible was published).

One of the the things that made Baptists unique was that they rejected infant baptism. The Lutherans and Calvinists had made progress in seeking to place the Bible above tradition but they still held to infant baptism.

John Smyth became convinced that the Bible taught believer’s baptism. He may or may not have been influenced by the Mennonites on this, who were already practicing believer’s baptism (and who were thus declared heretics by other protestant groups).

It may have been a number of decades later that baptism by immersion was adopted as the means of baptism. It seems at the beginning that the main concern was whether the individual being baptized had their own faith.

These origins helped shaped what Baptist beliefs and practice developed into. They were a reaction from a very top-down state church context.

There was a leader or small group of leaders, supported by the government, who was deciding what all Christians must believe and do. This led to an emphasis both on the local church and the separation of church and state.

In future posts, we will be looking at specific beliefs of Baptists but this gives some idea of where the Baptists came from and why they think the way they do.