Colonial New England Baptists The American Baptist Churches USA have their origins in the First Baptist Church in
Providence, Rhode Island, now the
First Baptist Church in America, founded in 1638 by the minister
Roger Williams. Regarded by the more dogmatic
Congregationalists of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony as a
heretic for his views, Williams was banished into the
New England wilderness where he,
John Clarke, and his Congregationalists and Baptists followers created the settlement of
Providence and later, the colony of
Rhode Island. Williams is credited with being the pioneer of bringing the Baptist tradition to America, the founder of the state of Rhode Island, and the first highly visible public leader in America to call for the
separation of the Church from state. was formed in 1638 in
Providence, Rhode Island.
Triennial Convention (1814–1907) Operating under a
congregationalist polity, Baptist churches in America existed autonomously from one another, following an array of
Protestant theological paths, but were often unified in their missions to evangelize. In the 18th century, they established the first Baptist regional associations in America for fellowship, support, work, and education, resulting in the founding of
Brown University in
Rhode Island, in 1764. The Philadelphia Baptist Association, headquartered in
Andorra, at Andorra Baptist Church, was one of these regional associations and it is considered the oldest Baptist regional association still in existence in the United States, linked to the founding of Brown. With the
Second Great Awakening, evangelical missions led to the establishment of the national
Triennial Convention in 1814, a collaborative organization by local churches, regional associations, and state conventions to organize, fund, and deploy missionaries. Some used the
Philadelphia Confession of Faith and the
New Hampshire Confession as guides to faith. The modern-day ABCUSA is the continuation of the Triennial Convention, as a renewed version or reorganization in its structure. Through the Triennial Convention, a number of mission-oriented societies were formed, including the
American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (1814),
American Baptist Home Mission Society (1832), American Baptist Publication Society (1841), and the American Baptist Education Society (1888). In May 1845, the majority of Baptist churches in the
South split from the Triennial Convention largely in response to the decision of its delegates to ban slave holders from becoming ordained missionaries. They went to found their own organization: the
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The Triennial Convention was structured loosely and offered local churches full autonomy, in contrast, however, was the SBC that had a more centralized organizational structure for carrying on missionary and benevolent work, a more traditional characteristic of Baptist ecclesiastical polity. The Triennial Convention continued to work through the separate cooperating societies for missions and benevolence. In 1882, May Jones became the first ordained female minister in the convention.
Northern Baptist Convention (1907–1950) in Washington, D.C., the Northern Baptist Convention first met to bring the 19th century mission societies of the Triennial Convention closer together.The Northern Baptist Convention was organized in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1907.
Charles Evans Hughes, then
Governor of New York and later
Chief Justice of the United States, served the body as president. The purpose of the Northern Baptist Convention as a reorganization of the Triennial Convention was to bring about a consistent cooperation among the convention societies and Baptist bodies out of the mainstream organization then existing. It was the first step in bringing together Baptists in the North "with ties to the historic American Baptist mission societies in the nineteenth century." These had contributed to establishing many schools for
freedmen in the South after the
American Civil War, as well as working on issues of health and welfare. Many of their missionaries and members had worked as teachers in the South. In 1911, most
Free Will Baptist churches merged with it. Due to the development of
theological liberalism in some affiliated seminaries, such as
Crozer Theological Seminary, conservative seminaries have been founded by convention ministers, including the
Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Chicago in 1913 and the
Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Philadelphia in 1925.
American Baptist Convention (1950–1972) in
Brooklyn, New York City, affiliated with ABCUSA The name of the convention was changed in 1950 to the American Baptist Convention (ABC), and it operated under this name until 1972. It was the second step at bringing together on a national level Baptists with ties to the mission societies. The ABC was characterized from 1950 to 1966 with annual resolutions at its conventions having to do with the
civil rights movement and race relations. As in many cases, the rhetoric of the annual assemblies was sometimes ahead of local activity, but the denomination gradually made progress. In 1964, it created the Baptist Action for Racial Brotherhood (BARB), which early the next year produced a pamphlet outlining actions for change in local churches. In 1968, the convention was challenged by "Black American Baptist Churchmen Speak To the American Baptist Convention", demands that challenged how the denomination had "conducted its business relative to black American Baptists." The black churchmen said the convention had excluded them from decision-making positions, even while working with good intentions on behalf of black American Baptists. The following year,
Dr. Thomas Kilgore Jr., pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles, was elected the first black president of the convention. The 1968 assembly also voted to create the Study Commission on Denominational Structure (SCODS). Its recommendations changed the denomination in a variety of ways, after being adopted at the 1972 assembly.
American Baptist Churches USA (1972–present) To reflect its new structure, the convention in 1972 changed its name to the American Baptist Churches USA. Rather than relying on decision-making at the annual assembly by whichever churches happened to send delegates, the SCODS restructuring resulted in the following: ==Governance==