And its author J. M. Carroll was a Southern Baptist!
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Independent Baptist churches vs Anabaptists
- Thread starter 360watt
- Start date
Please keep saying that loudly in your Convention church, especially when the Southern Baptist Dom is there [a Southern Baptist local Association's Director of Missions]. Or you might hear a new title that such Convention men use: Ms (Mission Strategist).
Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler in The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity [Broadman & Holman, 2013], (preface):
"I stand indebted to the Radical Reformation in ways that cannot fully be calculated. Though Reformed in soteriology, I recognize that my decidedly Baptist ecclesiology has far more in common with the Anabaptists. I stand with the Anabaptists in their insistence on the baptism of believers only and the necessity of the personal confession of faith in Christ. I reject Calvin’s understanding of church and state and side without apology with those who died at the hands of those used the states as an instrument of the church, or the church as an instrument of the state. I stand with them on the sole final authority of Scripture, even when it means standings against the received tradition."
Except when they get all fired up singing "My faith has found a resting place, not in device nor creed!" out of Soul-stirring Songs & Hymns?
jakethebaptist
Member
Point taken.
Ben1445
Well-Known Member
That is a good laugh.
They also were on cessationists and
Nope. You used the generic "Independent Baptists."
That's better.
I did not use the term "mainstream." I think IFBs are two independent to have a "mainstream!"
Of course there was influence. But there were no direct connections. No early Baptist pastor or other leader I know of came from the Anabaptists.
My crowd doesn't preach that way. We're more exegetical. I just finished a course, "Preaching Prophetic Themes," and it was all exegetical.Really? Many would do so even if it wasn't part of their sermon topic just to let you know they were not some sort of "Pussy-footing compromiser!"My point though was that certain of my Independent Baptist buddies actually think that Reformed fold are not much better than Roman Catholics and they were the ones in the "crosshairs" of the post I had made. Reformed people who were of the established "state churches" of their day did persecute the Anabaptists but Thomas Muntzer and the Zwickau Prophets were wreaking their havoc as well!
Point taken.
I'm not from that crowd. We are Byzantine priority. And Hammond has actually softened that stance under Wilkerson.
Not sure I understand this point.
Thanks for the good word.
I have to go. I'm "Deputy Dum Dum" in our IFB VBS skit.
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Well, it's a hymn. Who pays attention to the lyrics??
I have the book History of the Baptists by John.T.Christian. It fleshes out the references and adds others that you see in the Trail of Blood
Anthony Pritchard
Well-Known Member
Alan, thank you for the citations. They reinforce the point I was making. The believers’‑church principle existed long before the Swiss Brethren, and groups like the Waldenses, Petrobrusians, and others practiced convictions that later appeared among the Anabaptists. My distinction was simply between the ancient pre‑Reformation line, the Swiss Brethren of 1525, and the later Reformation‑influenced groups. Your sources confirm the antiquity of that earlier stream.
DaveXR650
Well-Known Member
This is true but it is not the same as claiming an unbroken line of succession. If that is important to anyone then Baptists came out of the Reformation and that's as far back as we can reliably go. I do think that proving historical linkage to some group is less important than doing it right. If you start a church next week from scratch and do it right it is just as authentic as anyone else's church. And I do think that Baptists today do it as right as anyone, and better than most.
As far as Anabaptists go, I do know you can get a pretty extensive collections of Menno Simons' writings and they are excellent and worth reading. I think many Baptists today though would be uncomfortable with the Anabaptist and Mennonite views on losing one's salvation as well as their mixing of faith and works for justification. And also, although they seemed to be against central governmental control of churches (and rightly so), they were not free spirited individually minded at all and had a strict and very severe system of church discipline. I don't think most of us would have been very comfortable in their churches to be honest.
No.
Most here would consider Anabaptist churches to be Baptist churches but Anabaptist denominations have a different distinctive (they hold baptistic views but traditionally are more narrow in doctrine).
What I've gleaned, is both Anabaptists and independent Baptists have quite a wide variation in amongst themselves.
So, someone says Anabaptists, and immediately comes to mind are groups separate from Baptists, because they are looking at the likes of Mennonites compared to Baptist churches starting in the Reformation.
The real story isn't that straight forward, with the Baptist distinctives, not just being from the Reformation time, but going right back. That is where some Anabaptist groups become very much the precursors to modern independent Baptists.
The problem is that this link is very difficult to pin down, as churches didn't record much of their own history. Their history being written by others who lump groups of churches under categories that sometimes did not give them justice.
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A major difference, again, is the autonomy of the local church. This website shows the hierarchy of a main denomination of the Mennonites: Church Structure | Mennonite Church USA. Mennonites are a denomination, as this website says, but the typical Baptist will deny that there is a Baptist denomination.
Some Baptist groups have a headquarters, but if there is one, it has no hierarchal authority. Way back when, my Dad was planting churches for the Southern Baptists in Kansas. One day the church he was planting had a business meeting, and the county SB headquarters sent a couple of men to investigate. My Dad said from the pulpit, "You men are not members here, so you have no say in this business meeting. Stay seated and don't speak or my deacons will usher you out." The men stayed seated all the way through the closing hymn.
Some Baptist groups have a headquarters, but if there is one, it has no hierarchal authority. Way back when, my Dad was planting churches for the Southern Baptists in Kansas. One day the church he was planting had a business meeting, and the county SB headquarters sent a couple of men to investigate. My Dad said from the pulpit, "You men are not members here, so you have no say in this business meeting. Stay seated and don't speak or my deacons will usher you out." The men stayed seated all the way through the closing hymn.
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Anthony Pritchard
Well-Known Member
The same is true of Baptist churches today. Baptist denominations and independent Baptist congregations vary widely, and many of them hold very narrow doctrinal distinctives of their own. In the case of the Independent Baptists, those variations are precisely what makes them independent.