Associated Baptist Press - 1/12/2009

Associated Baptist Press
January 12, 2009 · (09-5)

David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer

In this issue
Historians trace beginnings of Baptist movement back 400 years (1,004 words)
Scholars disagree on Anabaptist, Baptist connection (674 words)
Baptist influence on history of U.S., world a mixed bag, historians say (876 words)
Baptist history a continuing search for the New Testament church (664 words)
Baptists celebrate past with an eye to the future (1,014 words)
Who founded the Baptist movement -- John Smyth or John the Baptist? (775 words)
Historians debate reasons for rise of Landmarkism in 19th century (639 words)

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Historians trace beginning of Baptist movement back 400 years
By Ken Camp

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (ABP) -- Some Christians before 1609 held what many refer to as distinctively Baptist beliefs. Baptists in 1609 practiced believer's baptism, but they didn't immerse. Even so, most church historians agree Baptists emerged as a distinct movement 400 years ago.

From their beginning, Baptists have been characterized by a restless pursuit of God's truth, Bill Leonard said.

"Historically, the Baptist movement began in a time of great political and religious turmoil, when individuals and churches were searching for the ultimate revelation. Many were willing to relinquish once-cherished beliefs and practices when convinced that a greater and more biblical truth had been discovered," Leonard, dean at Wake Forest University Divinity School, wrote in Baptist Ways: A History.

"Such theological inquisitiveness led Baptist founder John Smyth to move from Anglicanism to Puritan Separatism in his quest for the true church. He then elected to administer believer's baptism to himself -- an act that marked the beginning of the Baptist movement."

Some Baptists claim John the Baptist as their founder -- an idea that gained popularity among the Landmark Baptist movement of the 19th century but was not limited to it. But most historians highlight Smyth's role in 1608-1609.

Smyth -- a former Anglican priest -- served as pastor of a Puritan Separatist congregation in Gainesborough, England. To escape persecution during the reign of King James, Smyth and his congregation fled in 1608 to Amsterdam. There they worshiped in a bake house owned by Mennonites, a Dutch Anabaptist group.

Baptism for believers only, not infants

After a year or so, Smyth became convinced the New Testament taught baptism for believers only, not infants. He baptized himself, disbanded the congregation and reconstituted the church as a gathered church of baptized believers -- generally considered the first Baptist church.

Church historians disagree about how closely Baptists can link their heritage to the earlier Anabaptists.

"Whether Anabaptists were direct forebears of Baptists remains a subject of debate," historical theologian William Brackney wrote in A Genetic History of Baptist Thought. "Historical scholarship in the past half century indicates that influences went both ways between Anabaptists and English Puritan Separatists, at least geographically."

However, Brackney concluded, the exact degree of influence Anabaptist ideas had on what became the Baptist movement in England remains uncertain.

Leonard points to three distinct positions regarding the relationship between Baptists and Anabaptists.

"Successionists link Anabaptists and Baptists in direct lineage with little or no distinction between the two traditions. Others point to certain shared ideals joining the two groups in a 'spiritual affinity,'" Leonard wrote, noting advocates of the spiritual kinship position point to commonly-held beliefs and practices shared by Dutch Mennonites and early English Baptists. "Still others have denied substantial Anabaptist impact on Baptist origins."

Degrees of separation

Church historian Alan Lefever, director of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection, insists: "It's a question of degrees of separation. Of course, there was some Anabaptist influence. After all, the church was formed in a Dutch Anabaptist bakery. But the fact remains, what emerged from that bakery in 1609 was unlike anything Anabaptists were before or after."

William Estep, who taught church history for more than four decades at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, stressed the influence of Dutch Mennonites on the English Baptists. He noted the sharp break Smyth made with his Puritan past.

"Smyth ... forsook the Calvinism characteristic of the Puritans and Separatists for a view of the Crucifixion that emphasized that Christ died for all in order that those who would trust him for salvation would be saved," Estep wrote in Why Baptists? A Study of Baptist Faith and Heritage.

Smyth "adopted other Mennonite teachings as well," such as advocating separation of church and state and commitment to absolute religious liberty, Estep added. Ultimately, Smyth led his church to unite with the Waterlander Mennonite Church in Amsterdam.

But that move toward formal union with the Mennonites led Thomas Helwys to part company with Smyth. Helwys returned to England with some other members of the Amsterdam church, and he established the first Baptist church in England, in Spitalfields, near London, in 1611 -- another key date in Baptist history.

"In clear contrast to the Mennonites, Helwys believed that a Christian could be a magistrate, take oaths and support 'just war' rather than pacifism," Doug Weaver of Baylor University's religion department wrote in his new book, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story.

Two distinct Baptist groups emerged

By the mid-1600s, two distinct Baptist groups emerged in England. General Baptists, who could trace their origin to the Helwys congregation, believed Christ died for all. Particular Baptists, true to their Calvinist Puritan roots, believed Christ died only for the elect.

"However, these two groups did not 'divide,'" Leon McBeth wrote in The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness. Rather, McBeth insisted, "they had quite different origins, at different times and places, and with different leaders."

Traditionally, many historians have credited the Particular Baptists with reinstituting the ancient practice of baptism by immersion around 1641. But like many aspects of Baptist history, some scholars dispute that assertion, pointing to evidence suggesting General Baptists immersed earlier than that date.

And to further complicate matters, some prominent Baptist scholars claim a direct Anabaptist influence on Particular Baptists.

Ethicist Glenn Stassen has pointed to striking similarities between the Particular Baptist First London Confession of 1644 and Dutch Anabaptist leader Menno Simons' work, The Foundation of Christian Doctrine.

Even so, one common characteristic of both Particular Baptists and General Baptists in the 1600s was their insistence they were Baptist, not Anabaptist. The First London Confession begins by identifying it as the generally held beliefs of the churches "commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists."

"Early Baptists claimed over and over again that they were not Anabaptists," Weaver noted. "Mennonite distinctives -- pacifism and the denial of church membership to a civil magistrate -- never found a home in the fledgling Baptist movement.

"Some Anabaptist-Baptist influence was apparent, but a direct connection between English Separatism and the first Baptists -- both General and Particular Baptists -- seems the best way to explain the historical evidence."

Ken Camp is the managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.

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Scholars disagree on Anabaptist, Baptist connection
By Bob Allen

DURHAM, N.C. (ABP) -- While much writing about Baptist history in the 20th century focused on what distinguishes Baptists from other Christians, a group of contemporary scholars believes the Baptist movement now needs to reconnect to its ecumenical roots.

Most modern Baptist historians mark the birth of the Baptist movement at 1609. A minority and often-controversial counterview argues the "true" baptistic church established by Christ and the apostles has existed, in one form or another, in unbroken succession since the New Testament apart from a corrupted Roman Catholic Church.

A small number of scholars put forth a third view. While not insisting on direct links between the Anabaptists and Baptist traditions as the Successionists do, they believe a kinship existed between early Baptists and Anabaptist communities that has been neglected, thus causing Baptists to marginalize themselves from the larger free-church family.

In a 1997 article, Curtis Freeman, now research professor and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, said the Baptist movement grew out of a conviction that the true church is a believer's church, free to worship by the gospel of Jesus Christ and not by power conferred from the state.

Over time, he argued, those ideals were influenced by philosophers like John Locke and American notions of populism and revivalism, to produce a corrupted and individualist Baptist identity where "every tub must sit on its own bottom."

"Anabaptist" was a term applied to various movements that emerged in Europe in the 16th-century period called the Radical Reformation. From the Greek prefix "ana," which means "again," and the word "baptize," it means "re-baptizers." Viewed as heretics, the term was applied originally to the Anabaptists as a term of contempt, an epithet today comparable to "sect" or "cult."

Descendants of those who survived persecution today populate groups including the Amish, Mennonites, Church of the Brethren and some German Baptists.

There is no question the earliest Baptists interacted with Anabaptists in the Netherlands -- when John Smyth's group left England for Amsterdam, they met in a bake house owned by a member of a Waterlander Mennonite congregation -- but historians disagree over the extent of cross-pollination between the groups.

Smyth's self-baptism -- viewed at the time as scandalous -- suggested he was not convinced the Anabaptists represented a true church. He later began to question the validity of his own re-baptism, however, and was waiting to join the Mennonites when he died in 1612. Repenting of their baptism, Smyth and 31 church members asked to merge with the Mennonite congregation.

Ten members, including Thomas Helwys, a layman who helped finance the group's move from England, believed their believer's baptisms were valid. They split from Smyth's church and later returned to England, where -- in facing an oppressive environment -- they became stalwart advocates for religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

William Estep, a longtime professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who died in 2000, said it is impossible to understand Baptist origins without studying Anabaptists. Estep claimed the earliest Baptists "were dependent on the Mennonites for the determinative features of what was to become known as Baptist faith and practice."

Glen Stassen, the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, contends a book by Menno Simons so shaped early Baptist confessions of faith that Baptists today ought to accept the Mennonite founder as a significant "parent."

Freeman said recent books have questioned whether the Helwys congregation survived and if it did, how much it influenced the mainstream of Baptist life. Most scholars today accept a "polygenetic" view of both the Anabaptist and Baptist traditions, meaning they probably grew from multiple streams instead of a single source, he said.

In collecting essays for a 1999 book titled Baptist Roots, Freeman and two co-authors included chapters from the 15th and 16th centuries by Anabaptist founders to provide a sense of the "connectedness with the larger free-church tradition."

They distinguished "Baptist" from "baptist," with the small "b" denoting "spiritual and theological kindred" with an extended denominational family.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Baptist influence on history of U.S., world a mixed bag, historians say
By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Baptists' signal contribution to American and world history and political thought, historians almost unanimously agree, is their uncompromising emphasis on religious freedom.

But, they hasten to add, the doctrine of soul freedom that grounds Baptists' belief in religious liberty is the very reason Baptists of varying stripes have been found on both sides of subsequent political and social controversies.

"Baptists were among the first -- if not the first -- to say in English certainly by 1612 that God alone is judge of conscience, and therefore neither the government nor a religious establishment can judge the conscience of the heretic -- the people who believe the wrong things -- or the atheists -- the people who don't believe at all," said Baptist historian Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School.

Baptists, Leonard said, "are really among the inventors of modern religious pluralism. They step way beyond mere toleration of second-class religious ideas to call for a full-blown religious pluralism."

But it wasn't out of a belief that all religions are equal. From their earliest roots, Baptists "continued to assert the uniqueness of their vision of the truth of not only Christianity, but their particular vision of the gospel," Leonard said. He noted, for example, in theological debates early Baptists "fought the Quakers as readily as they did atheists."

Nonetheless, in civil matters, Baptists "said everybody has the voice, and they said [neither] the state nor an official church can privilege a particular voice."

Primacy of the individual conscience

Historian Walter Shurden, retired director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University, said this belief in the primacy of the individual conscience is what animated early Baptists' advocacy for religious freedom.

"The Baptist people did not accidentally stumble upon the idea of religious liberty after years of opposing the idea; they were born crying for freedom of expression," he said, in a recent speech about 17th-century Baptist leader John Clarke.

Clarke co-founded both the colony of Rhode Island and the Newport, R.I., church that historians generally agree is the second-oldest Baptist congregation in the New World. He also helped secure, from the British crown, a charter for the colony that was the first governing document in the Western world to enshrine thoroughgoing religious freedom.

The idea of religious freedom and civil respect for multiple faiths and those of no faith at all was far more radical in the 17th century than it might seem to modern ears.

"There's one sense in which [early Baptists] participate in the breakup of the medieval conception of a Christian society, where to be born into a Christian state is to be automatically baptized into a Christian church -- and deviation from that is both heresy and treason," Leonard said.

Baptists' emphasis on the church being made up only of adult believers who have made an unforced decision to follow Christ on their own -- and on no civil authority interposing itself between the individual and God -- led to their commitment to safeguarding religious freedom for all.

Additionally, that emphasis lent itself to separating the realm of civil authority from the realm of religious authority -- the concept of church-state separation.

Encouraged the growth of democratic ideals

And, the historians said, the accompanying Baptist emphasis on individual and communal interpretation of Scripture required separation of civil and religious authority, and encouraged the growth of democratic ideals in the New World.

"If conscience is essential, then dissent is not far behind, because there are always those politically or religiously who want to dominate the landscape, be privileged and control voices," Leonard said. "And so at least early Baptists saw [the concepts of] a believers' church, conscience and dissent as very closely related -- inseparable, because one must always be vigilant."

Early Baptists not only secured religious freedom in the Rhode Island charter, but later fought -- alongside a coalition of Quakers, atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers -- to enshrine it in the new United States' Bill of Rights.

Beyond that, "We participated in and contributed to the 'democratization' -- the rights of the common folk to read the Bible, choose their own leaders, etc. -- of American religion and American society in general," said Baylor University professor Doug Weaver.

"Baptists were actually practicing some democratic principles in Baptist polity and worship -- individual conscience, democratic congregationalism and local-church independence, prophesying by lay members of the congregation -- before the tidal wave of the [democratization] of American life after the American Revolution."

But, Weaver and Leonard added, Baptists' emphasis on individual freedom and autonomy often led their descendants to be found on both sides of major political and social issues, depending on how they read Scripture.

For instance, Baptists were prominent on both sides of the slavery debate in the United States in the 19th century, as well as the 20th-century debate over segregation.

"We have contributed to American society in ways that we clearly wish we hadn't," Weaver said. "We have demonstrated, as much as any other religious group, the ability to be captive to our culture. Southern values, for example, in the areas of slavery and Jim Crow segregation defined and shaped the biblicist readings of the Bible in ways we find painfully obvious today but in earlier decades were considered biblically and patriotically faithful."

Robert Marus is manging editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press. Ken Camp, managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard, contributed to this story.

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Baptist history a continuing search for the New Testament church
By Ken Camp

WACO, Texas (ABP) -- Some Baptists stress evangelism, and others emphasize the social gospel. Some believe Christ died for all people; others say Christ died only for the elect whom God predestined to salvation. Historically, some defended slavery; others championed civil rights.

Even a cursory look at Baptists reveals wide diversity in beliefs and practices. But Baylor University religion professor Doug Weaver believes a common thread has run throughout Baptist history: the desire to replicate the New Testament model of the church.

"Baptist history has often been a journey in search of the New Testament church. Many Baptists assumed that the New Testament only had one type of church structure, and they embodied it. However, this restorationism, this constant quest for the pure church, produced an ever-flowing stream of different readings of the Bible. One distinctive would be emphasized by one group, and then another group would emphasize something else," Weaver wrote in his recently published book, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story.

Other historians have noted the importance Baptists have placed on modeling their practices and beliefs after the New Testament church.
In Baptist Ways: A History, Bill Leonard noted, "Biblicism led many Baptists to adhere to a strenuous 'primitivism,' a belief that the true church in any era is the one that best replicates the New Testament church."

William Brackney, writing in A Genetic History of Baptist Thought, said: "Among the Baptist theologians, Scripture was the starting point for a new doctrine of the church. They found the charter and practices of a New Testament form of Christianity in the Bible free from the corruption of ecclesiastic machinery."

Baptists share with Protestants in general a commitment to Scripture, Weaver noted. But they bring alongside that commitment to biblical authority a belief in the soul competency of every person and a fierce dedication to religious freedom.

"What is essential to being Baptists? It's the freedom to read the Scriptures and to say God can give a fresh word -- not a new revelation contrary to the Bible, but a fresh understanding from the Bible," Weaver said in an interview.

"The issue of conscience is crucial. The conscience of the individual has to be free to answer to God first and only secondarily to anyone else.... Emphasis on individual conscience, alongside the search for the New Testament church, is a distinctive way for us."

Baptists' emphasis on "unfettered conscience" has proved important because it "preserves or guarantees the right to dissent against conformity, whether it be from church or state," Weaver observed.
Adherence to that principle has resulted in "messy freedom," and most Baptists have accepted messiness as a price they have been willing to pay for liberty, Weaver added. Sometimes, that has cast Baptists in the role of troublemakers.

"Baptists have been dissenters. When we have been a dissenting minority, that has been the best of the Baptist tradition," he said.
Baptists have held in tension the role of the individual conscience before God and the role of the faith community in practicing discipline, he added.

"Individual conscience should always be honored, but in Baptist life, the local church acts as the 'bishop.' It surely can exclude the lonely prophet, but the lonely prophet and dissent were allowed because no one could come between a believer and God," Weaver said.

At their best, Baptists have honored individual conscience, biblical authority and belief in Jesus Christ as Lord, Weaver insisted.
He pointed to E.Y. Mullins, the early-20th-century Baptist theologian and author of The Axioms of Religion, who insisted truly born-again believers are "impelled" to be part of the church.

Weaver expressed hope Baptists in the future will find ways to honor both the role of the individual conscience and the community of faith.

"For the unfettered conscience to remain a vital principle for Baptists, we need to remember this dynamic of the individual and the church," he said.

"Freedom is messy," he said. "But that has been the Baptist tradition."

Ken Camp is managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.

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Baptists celebrate past with an eye to the future
By Jim White

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) -- In 400 years, the Baptist movement has grown to 200,000 churches with more than 50 million members in countries around the world.

But even though Baptists globally continue to show statistical growth, the largest Baptist group in the United States -- the Southern Baptist Convention -- has reported declining membership, following a trend other U.S. denominations began reporting two decades earlier.

"Some have said this is the first membership decline ever. That is not true," said Southern Baptist statistician Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research, a branch of the SBC's publishing arm. "However, I believe this time is different. I believe that, unless we have a significant intervention, we have peaked, at least in regards to membership.

"Citing percentages of growth since 1950, Stetzer observed: "Our year-to-year growth has been in a constant trended decline, not for one year, but for decades. This is ... a 50-year trend."

Researchers cite several cultural and religious factors that play into the decline. Philip Jenkins asserted in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity that the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was a major event overlooked by most researchers.

"As recently as 1970, Asian and Hispanic Americans accounted for only 8 percent of total births in the United States, but today, that figure has increased to more than 25 percent," Jenkins wrote.

"One reason for this transformation is that Latinos are generally much younger than longer-established populations. The national census of 2000 showed that the median age for Hispanics was about 26, younger than that of any other ethnic group, and far lower than the median age for Anglos, which stood at a venerable 38.5. By mid-century, 100 million Americans will claim Mexican origin."

Slow to respond

Rather than seize the demographic change as a missions opportunity, as a whole, Anglo Baptists have been slow to respond, some observers say.

To add further to the decline, while Baptists were not reaching the growth groups in the United States, their own birthrates were falling.
Baptist researcher Curt Watke, executive director of the Intercultural Institute for Contextual Ministry, points to the aging of the Baptist population and the related decline in the Anglo birthrate as cultural factors affecting growth in white Baptist churches.

Another factor -- discussed widely in church-growth circles -- suggests Baptists under 40 are disengaging themselves from denominational life and finding other affiliations more fulfilling.

Last year, former SBC president Frank Page received much notice and some criticism for saying, "If we don't start paying attention to the realities ... by the year 2030, we will be proud to have 20,000 rather than 44,000 Southern Baptist churches."

Current evidence suggests decline will be long-term without spiritual intervention. Programmatic approaches have failed. According to a recent report in USA Today, the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board spent $343,700 on a strategy called 'What Now' before pulling the plug.

"Another campaign, called 'Who Cares,' also fizzled," the newspaper reported. NAMB leaders hope their new evangelism effort, God's Plan for Sharing, or GPS, fares better.

A bright global future

But while future growth among Baptists in the United States is questionable, their global future looks brighter.

According to Baptist World Alliance figures, with Southern Baptist Convention statistics added for the United States, Baptists around the world have grown in number by 49 percent from 1990 to 2008. Baptists in Africa led all others in growth, increasing by 327 percent in that period.

Jenkins predicts the center of the Christian population will shift from North America and Europe to the Southern Hemisphere.

According to Jenkins, the Christianity of the future will incorporate some of the customs and practices of the regional population but will be biblically conservative, taking literally much that Westerners ignore.

"The denominations that are triumphing all across the global South are stalwartly traditional or even reactionary by the standards of the economically advanced nations. The churches that have made most dramatic progress in the global South have either been Roman Catholic, of a traditional and fideistic kind, or radical Protestant sects, evangelical or Pentecostal," Jenkins said.

"These newer churches preach deep personal faith and communal orthodoxy, mysticism and Puritanism, all founded on clear scriptural authority. They preach messages that, to a Westerner, appear simplistically charismatic, visionary and apocalyptic.

"In this thought-world, prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith-healing, exorcism and dream-visions are all basic components of religious sensibility. For better or worse, the dominant churches of the future could have much in common with those of medieval or early modern European times. On present evidence, a Southernized Christian future should be distinctly conservative."

Looking to the future

As Baptists plan their 400th anniversary celebrations, Bob Dale, author and recently retired associate executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, suggests they think ahead to the kind of celebration they want to have a generation from now.
Casting an eye to the future, Dale asks:

-- Will Baptists learn to become true partners of indigenous leaders -- globally and in the United States? Will they develop humility enough to learn from Third World churches?

-- Can Baptists change their win-lose Western mindset to a more Eastern challenge-response cooperative mindset?

-- Will Baptists in the West move beyond cultural prejudices and see Baptist cousins in developing nations as equals?

-- Will Baptists learn to read the Bible from its original Eastern roots rather than through the prisms of Western assumptions?

-- Will Baptists learn to relate to other large religious group in an ever-more-pluralistic world?

-- Will state conventions and associations become less absorbed with regional issues and more focused on world change, looking for the global dimensions of local concerns?

-- How soon will Baptists in the United States consider it shortsighted and foolish to speak only one language and be familiar with only one culture?

-- Can Baptists find ways to minister from the bigger cultural middle and let go of those on the narrower fringes who persist in fighting?

-- What if Baptists in the United States continue to focus on their needs and persist in the attitude: "As for me and my house, we will serve me and my house?"

Jim White is the editor of the Religious Herald, the newspaper of the Baptist General Association of Virginia.

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Who founded the Baptist movement--John Smyth or John the Baptist?
By Ken Camp

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (ABP) -- Baptists who celebrate the 400th birthday of their denomination in 2009 miss the mark by about 1600 years, some Baptists insist.

Since Jesus founded his church during his earthly ministry and promised "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," so-called Landmark Baptists believe that means an unbroken line of church succession dating back to Christ's lifetime. And since John the Baptist immersed Jesus, the church Christ formed was a Baptist church, some add.

"Landmarkers believe that Jesus meant literally that his church would continue in an unbroken lineage until he returned," said John Penn, church history instructor at Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock, Ark.

Landmark Baptists hold to their belief in church succession out of commitment to the veracity of Scripture and the claims of Christ, said Philip Bryan, president emeritus of Baptist Missionary Association Seminary in Jacksonville, Fla.

"The traditional Landmark Baptist position on the origin and continuation of the Lord's church is essentially one of doctrine and theology rather than history," Bryan said.

Baptists in perpetuity

Landmarkers believe in the perpetuity of the church Christ instituted -- "that there has never been a day since Christ founded his church when there was no scriptural church on earth, and that the church shall continue in existence until he comes again," he explained.

J.R. Graves spread Landmark Baptist teaching throughout the South and Southwest in the 1850s as editor of the Tennessee Baptist.

J.M. Pendleton perpetuated it for many generations through his Church Manual, a book still in print and sold by the Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay Christian Stores.

In the mid-20th century, Joe T. Odle of Mississippi taught the same principles in his Church Members Handbook, a popular booklet published by Broadman Press and used in Baptist Training Union classes throughout the South.

"No man this side of Christ can be named as the founder of Baptists. Nor can any date this side of his personal ministry, nor any place outside of Palestine, be set for their beginning," Odle wrote.

Many Landmark Baptists hold to the "Trail of Blood" teaching popularized by J.M. Carroll -- the belief that persecution was the mark of the true church throughout Christian history. W.H. Whitsitt was forced to resign from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1899 for daring to contradict unbroken succession.

In addition to an unbroken line of succession back to New Testament times, Landmark Baptists also believe in the primacy of the local church as the only biblical missionary-sending body, and in closed communion -- limiting the Lord's Supper just to Baptists or even to members of a specific Baptist congregation.

Landmarkers believe the true church that has existed since the time of Christ has not always borne the "Baptist" label, but it has exhibited certain distinguishing marks testifying to its validity. And for much of church history, one of those marks has been persecution.

The distinctive of persecution

"After the union of church and state, it is contrary to the teaching of Christ that any so-called church that enforced his teaching by persecution -- that is, by physical punishment, jailings and beatings -- could be considered his true church," Penn said.

"Landmarkers prefer to trace true succession through those groups who were persecuted than by those who inflicted physical suffering and death.... These groups were not called Baptists, but they bore the burden of preaching the truth."

Some of the dissenting Christians who were persecuted by the state church held "some strange or even heretical views," Penn acknowledged.

"However, it is also to be observed that they had their books burned, their houses pillaged, their Bibles confiscated and their children taken from them. Yet, in spite of this, they maintained a true witness," he said. "These dissenters kept the faith and passed it on to us."

Some Landmark Baptist historians note that while modern Baptists certainly do not hold identical views to Novatians, Waldenses and other ancient Christian groups who rejected infant baptism, they also differ significantly from early English Baptists, who did not practice baptism by immersion until about 1641.

"Assuming the validity of the Baptist belief that baptism by immersion is an absolute necessity for scriptural baptism, the accounts of the baptisms of John Smyth, the earliest Particular Baptists prior to the 1640s and even of Roger Williams disqualify such people from originating or continuing Baptist churches," Bryan said.

Gaps in the historical records require believers in any theory of Baptist origins to make a leap of faith, he insisted.

"We cannot show conclusively how modern Baptists sprang from the people who are usually believed to be the founders of the Baptist movement," he said.

"Those people were about 1,600 years late."

Ken Camp is managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.

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Historians debate reasons for rise of Landmarkism in 19th century
By Ken Camp

WACO, Texas (ABP) -- All Landmark Baptists believe in church succession, at least to some degree, but not every Baptist holding that position is -- or was -- a Landmarker, according to Alan Lefever, director of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection.

Neither J.M. Carroll, author of The Trail of Blood defense of Landmarkism, nor his more-famous brother, B.H., was a Landmark Baptist in the truest sense, said Lefever, author of Fighting the Good Fight, a biography of B.H. Carroll.

J.M. Carroll was the Texas agent for the Foreign Mission Board, secretary of the Texas Baptist Education Commission and president of Howard Payne College.

B.H. Carroll was the founding president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

"If you label them Landmarkers, then you have to call them 'denominational Landmarkers,' and that's an oxymoron," Lefever said.

The Landmark emphasis on succession was "almost inevitable" for Baptists, considering their consistent desire to replicate the New Testament church, said Doug Weaver, a religion professor at Baylor University and author of the recently published book, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story.

"Landmarkism built on themes and ideas already present in Baptist history. To say with confidence and biblicist certainty that you are restoring the New Testament faith and practice implies what Landmarkism makes specific: We are the embodiment of the New Testament church," Weaver said.

'Direct line of dissenters'

"Once you set up a dichotomy of a true church/false church, it becomes easy to identify false churches throughout history. I think that the development of the 'direct line of dissenters' occurs, at least in part, to combat an inferiority complex that comes from being a new group with no history or tradition. Thus, the Landmarkers can say: 'Hey, we are really older than all of you. We aren't Protestants.'"

Lefever disagrees with the notion Landmarkism was historically inevitable. Rather, he sees the Landmark movement as a direct response to Alexander Campbell, who taught baptismal regeneration and trumpeted the desire to restore the New Testament church. Campbell, a former Baptist, founded the movement out of which the modern-day Disciples of Christ denomination and the Churches of Christ -- a loose grouping of conservative, independent congregations -- developed.

"Landmarkism was a reaction to the Campbellite movement. It was like a vaccine to inoculate Baptists against Campbellite influence," he said, pointing out that it contained "just enough of the disease" to provide supposed protection.

"If Alexander Campbell had never come along, we'd never have had Landmarkism. There never would have been a need," Lefever insisted.

Competition with Campbellites

Both Lefever and Weaver explained the relationship between Baptists and the Campbell movement in terms of competition. A so-called Campbellite might say, "We have restored the New Testament church." But a Landmark Baptist could respond, "We are the New Testament church."

Weaver granted that Baptists share with Disciples of Christ and Churches of a Christ "a hermeneutic of restorationism," and Baptists in the 19th century certainly considered the Campbell-inspired movement a threat. He added the neo-Pentecostal movement of the early 20th century to that same category.

We claim apostolic authority for our practices ... especially baptism by immersion. But these groups do similar things. The Churches of Christ said, 'No musical instruments [in worship] because they aren't in the New Testament,' and the Pentecostals say, 'We have the full gospel found in the book of Acts,'" Weaver said.

"Because we have vied for the same mantle with similar methods -- biblical hermeneutics -- we have raised the stakes in the competition and thus increased tension."

Baptists and Church of Christ leaders have differed publicly, and often bitterly, to a large degree because they are so close in many respects, he added.

"It's sibling rivalry," Weaver said. "When someone is so much like you and you have so much in common, you tend to accentuate the differences."

Ken Camp is managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.