Association of Baptist Churches

Baptist believe that the New Testament teaches that the church is made up of those who have exercised faith in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and confessed their allegiance to him by being baptised. This is the model of the church that is clearly evidence on the pages of the New Testament.

There is therefore a real sense in which Baptists trace their roots to the New Testament. Indeed this continued to be the model until in 313AD. It was this year which brought a seismic shift in how the church understood itself. Its structures values priorities, language, relationships and ethos underwent revolutionary change. The effects of these changes are still with us. This radical transformation has as its starting point the conversion of Constantine in 313AD. 

After this date the church moved from being a growing group of outsiders who at times had been fiercely persecuted to being increasingly identified with the whole of society. It became the correct thing to be a Christian. Nominal Christians flooded the churches. Its leaders were courted. Political influence followed. Eventually the distinction between the kingdom of God as expressed in the church and the kingdoms of this world was almost totally blurred.

The erosion of the true doctrine of the church was almost complete. Instead there came the notion of the state church and the Christian country. Infant baptism provided the ready vehicle along with other practices to under gird the concept. Nominalism flourished and has led to more people entering a lost eternity thinking they are Christian than any other factor.

Other results have been the institutionalisation of the church, its identification with too many "flags" and the resultant spectacle of Christians at war claiming the same God was on their side. Indeed the tragedy of Northern Ireland flows straight from this source.

To Baptists after the doctrine of Scripture, the doctrine of the church is their second distinctive and crucial understanding. The tradition they represent has always been part of the church though at times the fringe understanding. It has been represented in the teaching of the Waldensians, the Hussites and the Lollards. However it was at the time of the Reformation that the distinctive became clear and challenged the status quo of Christendom.

Initially after Luther's protests there were only two 'sides'. On the one side were those who wanted to remain loyal to the Pope and to doctrines that had evolved in the church down the centuries. On the other side were the Protestants who soon began to reject the authority of the Pope and, at the same time, many doctrines taught by the church which they believed were false and had no place in the New Testament but were happy to continue with the notion of the state church. On the other side the forces loyal to the notion of the old Christendom church and al its influence stood firm. All of Europe became divided into these two camps. The religion of the prince was the religion of the people. Countries, towns, villages, even homes were caught up in religious division and often there was bitterness and persecution as the two sides struggled for supremacy over one another.

However a third 'camp' or faction began to make its presence felt in this great religious upheaval. Those concerned were nicknamed 'Anabaptists', because despite many variations in belief, by and large they all regarded infant baptism as invalid. In its place they introduced, or re-introduced believers' baptism, holding that the New Testament taught that a person comes to baptism rather than being brought to it. In other words, they taught that baptism belongs only to those who are able to hear and willingly and intelligently respond to the Gospel. Such were the only and true members of the church. These 'Anabaptists' therefore required their followers to submit to baptism as believers to declare their faith and to identify with the people of God. Their opponents called them 'Anabaptists' or 'Re-Baptizers', because they believed such a ceremony was a second baptism.

Because of their radical beliefs the Anabaptists were widely and cruelly persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics throughout the Continent. One church historian has written: 'No other movement for spiritual freedom in the history of the church has such an enormous martyrology'. Another wrote: 'The blood of thousands of martyrs watered the seeds of many new and fruitful ideas'. These fruitful ideas have contributed much to shaping the religious and social patterns of the modem world, in particular those of Britain and the United States. It was from these seeds that the people we know as Baptist today grew.

It may seem foolish to us that so many Anabaptists were prepared to die for what are generally held today to be minor points of doctrine and teaching. But that is not how they saw the situation. They had come to believe that Christendom was beyond reform and that a break from it was necessary, if purity of doctrine and practice of the New Testament were to be recovered. But they also came to the conclusion that the Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and others, had not gone far enough. What displeased the Anabaptists most was the retention of Infant Baptism as the door into membership of the church.

In short, they wanted to return to what they saw as the simplicity of order and worship of the early church. They believed that the pattern of church worship and witness recorded for us in the Book of Acts was the plain outworking of the commands of Christ, the true Head of the Church.

If the Great Commission of our Lord to His disciples in Matthew 28: 19 - 20 is examined, three elements emerge.

'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go,
and makes disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you'

These three elements lie at the heart of early church life and practice, as recorded in Acts 2:41, 42:

'With many other words he urged them, saying, "Save yourselves from the punishment coming on this wicked people."

'Many of them believed his message and were baptized'

'About three thousand people were added to the group that day. They spent their time in learning from the apostles, taking part in the fellowship, and sharing in the fellowship meals and the prayers.'

It seemed to the Anabaptists that neither Catholics nor Reformers were taking the plain commands of Christ and the example of the early church at their face value. They were failing to bring practice into line with the Bible, God's Word. Therefore, if the Anabaptists were to be true to their convictions as to how God was to be worshipped and obeyed, separation from both of these great religious power blocs was necessary. Indeed it gives the reason why so many of them were prepared to die. It was a case of obeying God rather than men.