Monday, November 11, 2024

Baptists are the most Ironically named type of Christian

I often get the sense that Secular people who don’t fully get internal Christian disagreement assume those called Baptists must be the ones with the most extreme views on Baptism.  But actually the difference in how Baptism is practiced by Baptists and before them Anabaptists that caused others to call them by those names is directly a result of seeing Water Baptism as not metaphysically important.

To a large extent what they actually see as most important is the belief in Separation of Church and State and the autonomy of the Local Congregation.  Now those are values they nominally share with Congregationalists, but there is a perception that this was watered down in the Congregationalists when they started wielding actual state power during the English Revolution and in the New England colonies.

I’m not a Landmark Baptist in the strictest sense, I certainly don’t think there needs to be an unbroken continuity of Believers Baptisms or “True Churches” going back to the Apostles.  And I disagree with Novatianism and Donatism.  But I do believe people who informally practiced Low Church Congregational Polity worship in defiance of the mainstream Church and State Authorities have always existed to some extent, sometimes they were also correct on Baptism and sometimes they weren’t.

The first Church was the Jerusalem Church, Eusebius' list of supposed Monepiscpal Bishops of Jerusalem up to the Bar Kokhba revolt is 15, 15 is barely over 100 years and when the first two he definitely has spanned all of the First Century AD. He’s clearly trying to impose Episcopal Polity onto a Church that didn’t have. I think all of the last half of that list were people still alive when Hadrian banned Jews from the City. 

Epiphanius of Salamis conceded the Nazarenes of Aleppo and Bashan descended from that Jerusalem Church even though he was critical of their practices.  These Nazarenes were certainly Credo-Baptists given they continued the practice of Infant Circumcision.

Philadelphia has no traditional list of Bishops till Nicaea.  For Caesarea after attempting to identify a Biblical figure as its first Bishop Eusebius has no one till Theophilus in 189, and that’s when talking about his own Bishopric.

I talked about the origins of the Waldenses in the Smyrna post on my new Prophecy Blog

And I have a post on the evidence that some of the Brythonic Christians (particularly near Wessex) were Baptists. For possible continuity between them and 17th Century Congregationalists and Baptists in England and America look into this list of names. 

Lollardy
Walter Brute
John Clanvowe
John Badby
John Oldcastle
Hawise Mone
Thomas Harding
William Tyndale

Puritans
John Penry
William Wroth
William Thomas
Walter Cradock
Vavasor Powell
William Erbery
William Kiffin

Olchon
Howell Vaughn
Thomas Perry
John Reese Howell
William Vaughan among the first Baptists of Newport Rhode Island
Thomas Dungan a student of William Vaughan founded first Baptist Church in Pennsylvania
Elias Keach Baptized by Thomas Dungan

Midland Connections
Edward Wightman of Burton upon Trent near Shrewsbury
Ezekiel Holliman of Hertfordshire who Baptized Roger Williams
Daniel Wightman of the Second Baptist Church of Newport Rhode Island
George Wightman grandson of Edward immigrated to North Kingston Rhode Island in 1660
Stephen Mumford and his wife Anne of Tewkesbury immigrated to Newport Rhode Island in 1664 and founded the first Seventh Day Baptist Church in America
Valentine Wightman son of George first Pastor of a Baptist Church in Connecticut 
Wait Palmer baptized and ordained by Valentine Wightman
Shubal Stearns baptized and ordained in 1751 by Palmer in Connecticut

Quaker
Dorcas Erbery

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