Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States of America. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with nearly 16 million members as of 2012. This also makes it the second largest Christian body in the United States, after the Catholic Church.

The word Southern in Southern Baptist Convention stems from it having been founded and rooted in the Southern United States, following a split from northern Baptists over the issue of whether slave owners could serve as missionaries. Members at a regional convention held in Augusta, Georgia created the SBC in 1845. After the American Civil War, another split occurred when most freedmen set up independent congregations. Many set up their own Baptist churches, regional associations, and state and national conventions, such as the National Baptist Convention, which became the second largest Baptist convention. Others joined new African-American denominations, chiefly the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Southern

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Baptists

Baptists are individuals who comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and that it must be done by complete immersion (as opposed to affusion or sprinkling). Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency (liberty), salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, pastors and deacons. Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity.

Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.

Historians trace the earliest church labeled "Baptist" back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening increased Baptist growth in both New England and the South. The Second Great Awakening in the South in the early 19th century increased church membership, as did the preachers' lessening of support for abolition and manumission of slavery, which had been part of the 18th-century teachings. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent.

Convention

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David Platt

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