Baptist

Baptist is a word describing a tradition of Christianity and may also refer to individuals belonging to a Baptist church or a denomination. The tradition takes its name from the belief that followers of Jesus Christ should be placed in water to show their faith. Baptists do not practice infant baptism.

In 1639, Roger Williams began a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, and John Clarke began a Baptist church in Newport, Rhode Island. It is not clear which church opened first since records for both churches are missing information.^[1]

Baptist churches do not have a central principal authority. Therefore, beliefs, mainly those that may be considered minor, are not the same from one Baptist church to another. However, on major issues, most are held in common among almost all Baptist churches.

Baptists share so-called "orthodox" Christian beliefs with most other moderate or conservative Christian denominations. Some of them are beliefs about one God; Jesus' death, burial, and bodily resurrection; the Trinity (the divinity of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father); the need for salvation; grace; and evangelism and missions.

There are over 90 million Baptists in the world in nearly 300,000 churches. There are about 47 million members in the United States.^[2] There are other large populations of Baptists in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. There are 2.4 million Baptists in India, 2.3 million in Nigeria, 1.9 million in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 1.5 million in Brazil.^[3]

In a poll in the 1990s, about 20% of Americans said that they were Baptist.

Many people outside the community see them as Protestant, but some Baptists do not and view theselves to have existed separately since early church days. Those holding the latter view believe that Baptists have never been a part of the Roman Catholicism and are not "protesting" against Catholicism. They also point out that Baptists have no connections with the Reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin, or Huldrych Zwingli.

Other Baptists accept the term "Protestant" as a category for churches that have similar religious views of sola scriptura, sola fide, the priesthood of all believers and other positions that Luther and Calvin that opposed the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

The label "denomination" is rejected by some Baptists because of the autonomous system for control that is used by their churches. Being a denomination is viewed by them as having a hierarchy similar to Roman Catholics'. Another reason for the rejection of the label is the influence of the Restoration period on Baptist churches, which tore down denominational barriers. Other Baptists accept the label and feel that it is truthful and has no bad meaning but is just a synonym for a Christian or other religious group with common beliefs.

The label Evangelical is rejected by some fundamentalist Baptists, who think that it is not fundamentalist enough. It is also rejected by some liberal Baptists who think that the term is too conservative. It is accepted by moderate Baptists who believe in the revival in the United States in the 1700s, called the First Great Awakening. Some Evangelicals also reject the label fundamentalist because they think that it is too extreme.