Baptists in The United States - History

History

Part of a series on the
History of the United States
Timeline
  • Prehistory
  • Pre-Colonial
  • Colonial period
  • 1776–1789
  • 1789–1849
  • 1849–1865
  • 1865–1918
  • 1918–1945
  • 1945–1964
  • 1964–1980
  • 1980–1991
  • 1991–present
Topic
  • Civil Rights (1896–1954)
  • Civil Rights (1955–1968)
  • Civil War
  • Cultural history
  • Demographic history
  • Diplomatic history
  • Economic history
  • Historiography
  • Military history
  • Southern history
  • Frontier and Western history
  • Technological and industrial history
  • Territorial evolution
  • Women's history
United States portal

Baptists appeared in the American Colonies in the early 17th century. The origins of the Baptist faith go back to the Reformation in England in the 16th century. One of the prominent dissenters who arose in the 17th century was John Smyth. Smyth was a strong proponent of adult baptism and in 1609 went so far as to rebaptize himself and others. Smyth's action was a sign of the first English Baptist church. Smyth was also a proponent of the Arminian modifications of Calvinist orthodoxy, which held that God's saving Grace is offered to all who accept, and not just to the predestined "elect"; Baptists from Smyth's time to today have divided along Calvinist and Arminian lines.

Read more about this topic:  Baptists In The United States

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
    —Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)

    “We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
    —Milan Kundera (b. 1929)

    “To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
    —Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)