Anthony Chute, Nathan Finn, and Michael Haykin, The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2015).

Introduction

Anthony Chute, Nathan Finn, and Michael Haykin have teamed up to provide readers with a fast-paced and wide-ranging introduction to the story of Baptist history (The Baptist Story). This 350-page volume spans the chronological, theological, and organizational developments of Baptists (as the subtitle states) from an “English sect” in the early seventeenth century to a “global movement” by the turn of the twenty-first century. This book covers a lot of ground in a relatively small volume, and therefore it is best understood as an introductory summary. Those new to Baptist doctrine and practices will benefit greatly from reading the book, and seminarians will find it a great place to begin making historical connections between Baptist history and Baptist distinctives. The book seems ready-made for group reading and conversation, even providing “For Further Study” and “Questions for Discussion” at the end of each chapter.

Historically, Baptists arose first in the English-speaking world, and this story focuses heavily on North America and Europe for that reason. And yet, Chute, Finn, and Haykin also provide quite a lot of information about Baptist expansion into non-western cultures and geography, especially after the rise of the modern missions movement in the mid-nineteenth century. While introductions to Baptist history like this do usually provide at least some information about such an expansion, these authors have made an obvious effort to give more detail than is normal. They have also written more than what is typical about those North American Baptists who lived north of the United States of America (i.e., Canada). Inevitably, a lot is left out in an introductory volume of this size and nature, but the authors have done a remarkable job in including what they have.

Book Summary

The book is divided into four major sections, the first three divided further into four distinct chapters, and concludes with an argument for several Baptist distinctives in the final section and chapter. Nearly the entire book follows the path of chronological history, which helps the reader envision an unfolding story, and each historical segment also highlights important theological and organizational developments along with important figures who shaped them and were shaped by them.

Section Four

The last chapter, which is the entirety of the fourth section, provides the reader with an explanation and affirmation of five Baptist distinctives. These, the authors contend, are best understood not as mere “conditions” or “conveniences,” but as convictions.[1] There are good reasons to wait until the last chapter to make such claims and arguments about what it means to be a Baptist, but one wonders if this final chapter might not have served the reader better by placing at the beginning of such a volume. The reader might be better prepared to see these doctrines and practices that comprise the core of Baptist identity develop throughout the book if he or she knows what to look for from the beginning.

The authors list many sources upon which one might draw in order to discover the core of Baptist identity. Sermons, prayers, hymnody, books, periodicals, pamphlets, catechisms, confessions, covenants, and church records are all full of substance that can provide the observer insight into the common beliefs and practices that unite all Baptists.[2] And having scoured these resources, the authors note that “most of the Baptist distinctives are ecclesiological in nature.”[3] They list regenerate church membership, believer’s baptism, congregational polity, local church autonomy, and religious liberty as the five core distinctives. A few of these distinctives may be shared with other Christian traditions, but regenerate church membership and believer’s baptism (as Baptists have defined these doctrines) are exceptional marks to identify Baptist churches. In fact, the authors note that regenerate church membership – holding to the conviction that “formal identification with the body of Christ is only for those who have acknowledged Christ’s lordship over their lives by faith” – is “the foundational Baptist distinctive” (emphasis added).[4]

All five of these marks of Baptist identity have been developed in real time since the early seventeenth century by men and women who became convinced of their biblical mandate to believe and practice them. The authors note that some Baptists have embraced a view called Landmarkism, which relies heavily on the pseudo-historical works of George Herbert Orchard (“A Concise History of Baptists from the Time of Christ Their Founder to the 18^th Century,” published in 1838) and J. M. Carroll (“The Trail of Blood,” published in 1931). The Landmark movement “officially commenced in 1851 at a meeting in Cotton Grove, Tennessee,” and Landmarkers believe that Baptists do not arise as a Protestant sect but that they have a completely distinct history from other Protestant traditions.[5] James Robinson Graves (1820-1893) and James Madison Pendleton (1811-1891) were major leaders of this movement, and Pendleton’s “Baptist Church Manual” (published in 1867) made Landmarkism a widespread perspective among Baptists whether they embraced the historical claims or not.

Section One

These ahistorical claims notwithstanding and their real impact noted, the history of Baptists truly begins with one congregation and two significant figures – John Smyth and Thomas Helwys. And in the first section of The Baptist Story, the authors sketch the Baptist beginnings. Smyth became convinced that only believers should be baptized, as a symbol of their conscious and present faith in Jesus Christ as lord and savior. His short-lived leadership was surpassed by Thomas Helwys who (in 1612) took “a handful of members” of that first English-speaking Baptist congregation back to England, from whence they came.[6] It was Helwys who led that church to embrace a distinctly Baptist confession of faith and church covenant, and it was that congregation who were the pioneers of what became the General Baptists in England.

The ideas and convictions of Baptists soon spread to the New World as well. Before Helwys split with Smyth, John Robinson had already led “about 100 members” of the Smyth congregation to break off and relocate in Leiden (in the Netherlands).[7] And this group “eventually sailed to America on board the Mayflower and landed at Plymouth… in 1620.”[8] During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Baptists in America and in England developed quite similarly. But Baptists in the New World encountered societal and political circumstances that would influence Baptist thought and practice worldwide.

Section Two

The authors trace Baptist history through the founding of the new nation in America, and then they turn (in section two) to the nineteenth century, when Baptists enjoyed great progress and endured devastating setbacks. The First and Second Great Awakenings propelled Baptist numbers beyond all but the Methodists, and advances in religious liberty provided circumstances for exponential growth. Old Baptists (arising from those seventeenth-century Baptists in England) and newer Baptists (Separates from Puritan and Congregational churches in eighteenth-century America) developed into one larger Baptist movement, though still lacking broad organizational structures that would emerge later in the nineteenth century. By the turn of the nineteenth century, many Baptists in the New World were already connecting with one another through regional associations, and within just a few decades cooperation and connection became ubiquitous through state conventions and national societies.

A few major trends began to take shape during the nineteenth century: ministerial education, missions mobilization, and societal activism. Before the Civil War, several regional schools for training Baptist ministers were founded, including Union University, Mercer University, and Baylor University. The Triennial Convention (1814) and the American Baptist Home Missions Society (1832) were each formed for the purpose of Baptist cooperation for foreign and domestic missions, respectively. These cooperative efforts among Baptists were divided between the north and the south in 1845, when the Southern Baptist Convention was formed as the result of a split over slavery and polity. Baptists in the north remained connected through affiliation with what was then called the Northern Baptist Convention. Though this divide is a tragic event of history, both conventions demonstrate a strong Baptist impulse and commitment to evangelism and church planting efforts.

Section Three

In the third section of the book, the authors focus on the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. During these years, Baptists continued to grow in number, expand their institutional structures, and face various controversies and challenges. Baptist seminaries, Baptist conventions, and Baptist churches all seemed to become modernized. New Baptist seminaries were founded, and the schools accommodated the professionalized approach to ministry that was adopted among local Baptist churches. Baptist pastors (once commonly called elders) embraced the title of “Reverend,” and numerous staff and volunteer positions were established within the structure of local church polity and function.

In 1925 Southern Baptists adopted the Baptist Faith and Message as their confession of faith, which would serve as a sort of theological boundary marker for various convention entities (such as seminaries and missions agencies). Northern Baptists rejected the adoption of any confession, and time would prove that at least some Southern Baptists did not believe that the BF&M (in both its 1925 and 1963 versions) was actually binding in any meaningful sense. Theological liberals and moderates proliferated in Baptist seminaries and convention leadership until the late 1970s and early 1980s. What is known to conservatives as the Conservative Resurgence was the successful implementation of a political strategy to recover the Southern Baptist Convention from continuing its drift into theological liberalism, along with the mainline denominations.

The authors are right to point out along the way the painful and scandalous development of Baptists (especially Southern Baptists) on the concept of racism generally and the treatment of African Americans specifically. While various Baptists (both in America and in England) did oppose chattel slavery from its beginning, many Baptists in America came to embrace the institution and even to argue for it in overtly racist ways. So too, one major reason (maybe the main reason) the Southern Baptist Convention exists today is because of the insistence of white Southerners upon Baptist cooperation with slave-owners and the institution of slavery itself. Even after slavery was abolished in America, many Baptists in the south were complicit in societal and institutional structures that remained prejudicial against those of African descent.

The Baptist story is not one of perfection, but it is one of tenacious efforts to gather true churches of regenerate believers, to spread the good news of the gospel farther than it has presently gone, and to promote a kind of religious freedom that invites only voluntary (not coerced) sinners to join local churches by repenting of sin, believing in Christ, and being baptized as a public profession of faith. Baptists have worked hard to make their way in the world, and they have sometimes acted more worldly than as Christians, but one can hardly find a more vigorously evangelistic and democracy-loving Christian than a Baptist.

Conclusion

This is an excellent introduction to the fascinating history of Baptists. It is an accessible read for most any level of skill and knowledge. The format and resources found within the book will also be a help for interested readers to explore Baptist history further. Whether you are an experienced student of Baptist history or you are just beginning to learn the basic characters and developments, this book will help you understand how the Baptist story fits together.

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[1] 325-326.

[2] 326-327.

[3] 330.

[4] 331.

[5] 171.

[6] 19.

[7] 18.

[8] 18.