Life In the Southern Baptist Convention: 1993

Abstract

"Soon the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding. Organized in 1845 out of the bitterly divisive slavery trauma, the Convention began with a small number of churches concentrated in the old South. The new denomination came into being with two rather significant and enduring commitments. One was to bring churches cooperatively together to further the cause of missionary expansion, both at home and abroad. The second was to organize the new denomination in such a way that the historic Baptist principle of church autonomy would be protected. The rural setting of most of the churches, combined with the frontier mentality of the new nation, mandated this approach to denominational ecclesiology"