Baptists: The Most Misunderstood Movement of the Reformation

Walter Strickland:
Welcome to another episode of White Horse Inn. We’re currently in a series working through the misconceptions of the Reformed traditions that are seated at the table today. We’re exploring the Baptist tradition, the often misunderstood realities of it that are grounded in individualism. Some might even say it’s as American as apple pie, which is what Bob said a couple days ago. It’s less intellectually sophisticated and even more sectarian. But the truth is, it’s a little bit more layered than that. Today, we’re going to explore those layers, answering questions including: What is freedom of conscience? Why the emphasis on religious liberty? And what is, or why, the emphasis on regenerate church membership, and where did that come from? I’m here to do that today with Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Bob Hiller, and I am Walter Strickland. Alrighty, guys. So I know there are some misconceptions out there, so let’s start working our way through them.

Justin Holcomb:
Aren’t Baptists historically Arminian?

Walter Strickland:
Well, you know what? That’s a good place to start. This is a question, or misconception, that I often hear strictly because of the pervasiveness of the Southern Baptist Convention today. If you look at the Southern Baptist landscape—which, for many, almost seems synonymous with being Baptist in America, which is certainly not the case—there are several different, more conservative denominations. The General Association of Regular Baptists, we have more progressive Baptist denominations, and so on and so forth. Some are more mixed in their disposition or composition. We have the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which folks assume is progressive in its theology. It’s actually fairly orthodox in its theology but very progressive in its social engagement because it was established in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr., Daddy King, Gardner C. Taylor, and others. But all that to say, because the SBC is so prevalent and so much in the news—the news loves to love the SBC in the worst way—it just seems as if there is a focus there. The SBC in particular has had this missiological ethos where everybody, if presented with an opportunity to receive Christ as Lord, then they have the choice to do it.

Fast-forwarding even to the middle of the 20th century—really even the 1970s and 80s—there was a reality called the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. At that moment in the denomination’s history, there was a lot of neo-orthodox thinking and even just modernist, liberal thinking in our seminaries. But that didn’t parallel with what was going on in the pews in the churches.

So what happened was that some denominational leaders recognized the need to correct what was going on in the seminaries. There was a very interesting plan that took advantage of our congregational polity: If we get 10 consecutive conservative presidents, who then appoint people to our committee on committees, who then appoint people to the committee on nominations, they’ll appoint conservatives onto the boards of our seminaries and mission boards, etc. If you do that for 10 consecutive years, you get a conservative majority on those boards. Then you bring in conservative presidents and so on—people who are just historic Christians in those spaces.

When that came about, the leaders of that conservative resurgence were overtly Arminian in their soteriology. So when these folks brought back the Bible, they brought back with it other things like dispensationalism, a very heavy-handed understanding of biblical complementarity, and also a very Arminian soteriology.

Since then in Baptist life, the conservative resurgence had its sort of cherry on top in 2000 with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, saying we have to affirm this in our doctrinal statement. By the time I got to seminary in 2006, there was a budding movement that was drawing upon the Particular Baptist tradition that was the majority going all the way back to the 1630s and 1640s. Now there’s a conversation going on that is bringing more Reformed thinkers to the table. The Reformed Baptist conversation is actually fairly robust within the SBC today. It was very contentious for a while. I remember there was a conference held at Ridgecrest Conference Center, which is a haven for the SBC in western North Carolina.

The conversation was essentially between those who are traditionalists—which, in the SBC, they have said is more Arminian/General Baptist—and the Reformed Baptists, represented by the Founders. They were basically having a conversation about how the two could coexist within the SBC. So I know that’s a rambly way to answer the question, but—

Justin Holcomb:
That was way more robust than I even knew to consider. That’s what’s fun about getting a historical answer from a theologian—there are so many contours, social settings, and institutional pieces that feed into that misconception that you just outlined. It didn’t sound rambly to me.

Bob Hiller:
So, Walter, can I ask a follow-up question just to keep going with this?

Walter Strickland:
No, go ahead.

Bob Hiller:
So there’s an Arminian bent in some of the Southern Baptist Convention, but not all. Is everyone in the Southern Baptist Convention Arminian, or is there a Calvinistic side as well? And maybe this is the way of asking the question: What is the confessional standard within Baptist life? Like, what makes somebody a Baptist?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So it is a mixed body in that regard. Not as in there are people who—Let me backpedal. So, as far as your specific question, Bob, there are people who would say that they’re more Arminian leaning and then more Reformed/Calvinistic leaning within the Southern Baptist Convention. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 is intentionally broad enough for both to exist within its bounds. That goes all the way back to the English separatist movement.

What we see from there is, fairly early on, in the 1600s and 1610s, the General Baptists became a sort of identifiable group. At that point, you wouldn’t really call them Arminian because Arminius was still around at that time. Later, they would say yes, Arminian.

Michael Horton:
And they would claim a kind of Mennonite background, right? They were close to the Mennonites, unlike the Calvinistic Baptists.

Walter Strickland:
For sure. And then the Calvinistic Baptists—the Particular Baptists—and the distinction between General and Particular Baptists is all about how we discuss the atonement’s extent. This emerged in the 1630s and 1640s. And just a quick note about the Particular Baptists: to say that they were all five-point Calvinists—I know that we just kind of don’t like all the ways that that is articulated—but to say they’re all five-point Calvinists is a misnomer. They were either Amyraldian or they were five-point Calvinists.

Michael Horton:
Explain Amyraldian.

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, Amyraldian?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, so they said there’s an unlimited atonement.

Michael Horton:
So hypothetically, everybody is saved by the blood of Christ—hypothetically—but not actually.

Walter Strickland:
Yeah. But if you look forward to the 1644 London Baptist Confession, that is actually a five-point Calvinistic statement. Then, as we continue from there, after the English Civil War, the Particular Baptists really become the majority of Baptists in England. And you have a lot of really bad Christology and Trinitarian ontology among the General Baptists, and so that really waned and almost died. So by the 1700s, Reformed Baptists are the majority in England. They were associated in contrast with the General Baptists, who were in conversation more with Anabaptists and Mennonites, but the Reformed Baptists were more associated with their Calvinistic forebearers, who were Puritans. If we take a step back, looking at Baptist history as a whole, there is actually a greater Particular Baptist footprint. But because the largest contemporary Baptist denomination is one that is more Arminian in its theological and sociological disposition, there is the common misconception that all Baptists who are conservative in their theology are, in fact, Arminian.

Justin Holcomb:
Interesting.

Bob Hiller:
We are trying to deal with misconceptions, and one of the misconceptions is that the Baptists have no confessional or creedal standard. So then what is it that makes one a distinct Baptist? I mean, you just referenced the London Baptist Confession.

Walter Strickland:
Yes.

Bob Hiller:
So there is a confessional standard in some Baptist circles, at least.

Walter Strickland:
There is the London Baptist Confession of 1644, and in 1689, which is the Baptist Confession of Faith, we’ve seen a resurgence of as of late, especially among those who are obviously Reformed Baptists. As we jump to the States, there’s the 1742 Philadelphia Confession of Faith, which is a Particular Baptist statement. There’s more from there. Even the Baptist Faith and Message—the first iteration was during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in 1925. There’s another version in ’63, and then the one I just referenced in 2000. All that to say, there are confessions of faith that help define what it means to be Baptist. But there are some Baptist distinctives. In addition to the catholicity of Baptists—which many of my Baptist brethren and sisters get squeamish at me talking about Baptist catholicity, our affirmation—

Bob Hiller:
I’d be squeamish if that helps.

Walter Strickland:
Well, by catholicity, I’m just talking about the Baptist affirmation of the historic creeds like Nicaea, the Trinity. I know there’s a discussion about what happened in 2024 at the Southern Baptist Convention about that, but there is an affirmation of Trinitarian theology, Chalcedon, hypostatic union, and things like that. There is that sort of Catholic affirmation. But as far as the uniqueness of Baptist life, there is a reality that’s very much in the forefront: that every person is going to stand before God themselves and answer for what they have done with Christ. Because of that decision, they are involved, baptized, and therefore involved in the local church comprised of regenerate church members. Those people, whose freedom of conscience allows them to fully respond to the call of the Gospel—and again, I’m speaking broadly because of the general/particular soteriological frameworks—are then baptized, part of a regenerate church body, and that group of regenerate church members creates an autonomous local church that then affiliates with other Baptist associations, denominations, and bodies.

So really, that soul competency is one of the foundational ideas that marks a Baptist, because it charted a course for some of those Baptist distinctives that go back to its founding. We talked about the separatist—or, which separatist I know has poor and negative connotations, but—the reformational or the reform movement that comes out of the Church of England. They were trying to go back to the New Testament in a way that’s consistent with their convictions, trying to be free from the state church, saying there should be religious liberty, that the state is not a mediator between the believer and God, that each person stands before God themselves. Those ideas of freedom of conscience and religious liberty emerge from this idea of being able to make that decision. I know that’s rife with accusation of individualism and we can talk about that, but I do think there’s a lot to be discussed there.

Michael Horton:
Walter, let me ask this question. I mean, there are a lot of things that come out of that, the fruit of that, that I think we would appreciate, like the separation of church and state, freedom of conscience, and so forth—things that we would agree with. But I guess my question to you would be: In our Reformed point of view, you come to—the Word creates the church. Faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ. So it’s actually the means of grace—preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper—that create the church. Faith comes out of that. But the church is where that’s done, where that happens, and faith comes out of that. You can have lots of people who are—it’s a mixed body, you have the wheat and the tares growing together until the harvest. But the reality of the church isn’t how many, whether there are weeds in God’s garden, but whether that ministry is taking place. That’s where the church is. It seems like—correct me if I’m wrong—in the Baptist approach, it’s actually individuals choosing, and that faith creates the church. So it’s not the community created by the Word and the sacraments; the Word and the sacraments are things that are done by and with individuals. I form a church out of a bunch of people willing, like a social contract, forming a republic—individuals coming together, deciding the same thing rather than being formed into a community by the same thing. Does that—

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, that’s helpful. I think my response would be that—I think we would agree that the church is a place where the Gospel is proclaimed, and the sacraments—or Baptists would say, ordinances—are taken. That’s what goes on in the church house. As far as what membership looks like in that local church, I think that’s where the distinction is. People can come to a church that is doing Word and sacrament who don’t know who Christ is; they’re there learning about Christ, hearing the Word preached, hearing testimony of what Christ has done, even observing those who are taking the Supper in those ways. But those who are members of that church—we would say they are people of the New Covenant, and entry into that New Covenant people is Christ. So if somebody off the street comes into a Baptist church, they’re welcome to come, welcome to see, welcome to participate in some ways as they’re hearing the message of Christ and the forgiveness of sin. But it’s when they hear the Word and then—and again, there is a distinction between the ways Particular and General Baptists talk about what happens at conversion and the order of things, so I’m trying to be general—but someone enters into the New Covenant, let’s just say, through Christ’s death and resurrection; they have a credible profession of faith, declaring that “I’m dead in trespasses and sins, I need Christ’s atonement for my sin, and because of that I’m made alive.” All energized by the power of the Holy Spirit. At that point, they’re baptized as a sign and seal of being part of this community, and the membership discussion at that local church is kind of like two sides of the same coin with baptism and membership—they happen kind of simultaneously.

So I would say, somebody can’t just make a church; there are prescribed things that need to happen: Word, sacrament. But then the members are those who have identified themselves with Christ as being part of the New Covenant. Does that clarify a little bit, Mike?

Michael Horton:
Yeah, yeah—but basically the church is found, the source of any particular church is a group of people who are regenerate and come together to form a corporate body. Is that fair?

Walter Strickland:
Well, in some ways. I would say that certainly it’s established on the Gospel—I know you’re not pushing back against that—so there is no church without the Gospel. I know you’re not pushing back against that. But what I’m trying to articulate is that those people come together, standing on the rock who is Christ, and become a local expression of the universal people of God as a New Covenant people. That’s how a church would be formulated.

Bob Hiller:
So let me ask you this then: What is the role of the pastor, and what is the ecclesiastical authority? Because the misconception is that the priesthood of all—the overvaluation of the priesthood of all believers in the Baptist church—undermines ecclesiastical authority. I’m asking that question for Justin.

Michael Horton:
Bishop holcomb, come over here!

Walter Strickland:
You know, we don’t like any accountability. We hate denominations.

Bob Hiller:
This is attractive!

Walter Strickland:
For all the individuals out there, we are for you.

Justin Holcomb:
Christ for you—Baptists, also for you.

Walter Strickland:
For sure. So yeah, that is a misconception. The priesthood of all believers doesn’t nullify pastoral or ecclesiological authority. What it means is that we have direct access to our Lord, and it’s not mediated by a priest. I think we would all affirm that. I do think that there are some Baptists, in fairly low-church contexts, who would minimize the authority of leadership in such a way that it’s unhelpful. But Baptists have historically affirmed the office of pastor, elder, overseer, as we see in the pastoral epistles. Pastors don’t mediate salvation or ongoing grace, but they point us to the one who is our source of salvation and grace.

Really, pastoral authority is based on scriptural authority, not being part of a specific group necessarily. One thing I would say is that pastors are voted on congregationally within churches. They are appointed to the office because the congregation has recognized them as meeting the pastoral requirements in the epistles; someone they would trust to shepherd them toward the Good Shepherd and guide them toward Him. So in many ways, I, as a pastor in a Baptist church, am constantly pointing people past me to Christ. The church body has said, “We believe and trust you, because we’ve seen your doctrine, we’ve watched your life, and we’ve understood that we would submit to your pointing us to Christ,” and they would follow your leadership in that way.

This is the blessing and the curse of Baptist life—someone could, as you say, Mike, just sort of establish a church, in the worst sense, almost willy-nilly, right? But churches that are healthy wouldn’t run away from association, partnership, and even agreement on shared documents to guide their collective theological engagement, like the Baptist Faith and Message has functioned in the SBC. What happens is that if a church chooses to go against those documents that bring those churches together, then those who are still part of that body could vote them out, but they don’t have the ability to tell that individual church what to do in their own local church.

That’s one of the uniquenesses of Baptist life: Our cooperative efforts are voluntary association. The association is voluntary, but they can be voted out by those who are also voluntarily together under those shared documents. Does that make sense?

Justin Holcomb:
So again, we’re looking at misconceptions. And one of the misconceptions relates to baptism and Lord’s Supper—that they’re merely symbolic gestures. I’d love for you to dive into, specifically with baptism, that they’re trying to withhold something from children. Those of us who baptize children would say, “You are withholding it.” There’s a misconception built into the ordinances, which every time we talk about sacraments, you kind of give a little asterisk—ordinance, because that’s the language that’s there. Can you dive in on any Baptist misconceptions or misconceptions about the Baptist view of baptism and Lord’s Supper?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, so—the elephant in the room for Baptists is the language. Is it ordinances, is it sacraments, is it Eucharist? Well, I’m very comfortable with “Eucharist”—Thanksgiving, if I’m recalling that right. The language is really irrelevant. But I think what Baptists try to push away from is the regenerating power that is given to sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church. So they just switch the wording out, which is why you hear me accommodating that existential angst it causes Baptists to hear that language out of a Baptist.

Justin Holcomb:
Well, it happens in other traditions with, like, the Nicene Creed—the “one holy Catholic and apostolic church,” and people start twitching and go, “small c! small c!” They just weird out, they can’t just say it, they have to qualify it. By the time you’re done qualifying, you’ve ended up not saying the creed; you’re just trying to say there’s an asterisk.

Walter Strickland:
On the slide in the church where they say it, so they can see it below.

Justin Holcomb:
“Not Roman Catholic!”

Walter Strickland:
So, as far as the Lord’s Supper and baptism being merely gestures, the reason why this is a misconception, especially—I would definitely understand it more if I was coming from one of your traditions, going to Baptist churches that spend so much time explaining away the value of baptism: “This is not salvific; this is not going to do anything; this water is just nothing.” So it’s almost like—“what are we doing here then? Didn’t Jesus command us to be baptized? For what? So we could not”—it’s like negative theology, almost.

With the Supper, there’s just a memorial view that’s very popular within the SBC in particular—I speak as a Southern Baptist, which is why I mention the SBC often. But there’s a memorial view, a Zwinglian view, which sees it just as a symbol, a token. The Spirit is there in the same way the Spirit would be present in your prayer closet at home. There’s nothing special about this moment. But the reality is, if we look at Baptist history, the spiritual presence position—which is a more Reformed view of the Supper, “this is my body” as interpreted to mean that Christ promises his spiritual presence at the Supper—is actually the predominant position among Baptists. What we’re seeing is a move back toward a spiritual presence baseline within many more evangelical or even conservative Baptist environments.

So I think that kind of good mystical reality is coming back because there was such a push away from anything spirit-filled out of a desire not to be Pentecostal. I think we’re finally getting over that. Especially coming out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, I would even say some of the demythologizing that was going on stayed with some Baptists—trying to push it away, especially in the conservative resurgence, minimizing the significance of the ordinances or sacraments in the life of the church became a means of looking to Christ alone, not allowing anything to cloud our view toward him.

Bob Hiller:
It’s my understanding, then, that when we do come to the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, you only ever get grape juice because all Baptists are teetotalers. Is that a misconception, or am I reading things the wrong way?

Walter Strickland:
So I would say this: There is one Baptist church that I know of which gives the option of grape juice or wine. That’s an interesting question. This is more historically oriented as far as why contemporary Baptists do it this way. In the 1800s, American Baptists were deeply involved in the temperance and prohibition movements. At that time, alcohol abuse was rampant; it was tearing families apart, especially among working-class people. Out of concern for the family—which is a good gift from Scripture—many Baptists practiced total abstinence as a moral safeguard.

Since then, we’ve seen some people read and misread, I think, some texts to explain away the wine in those texts. I won’t go into a bunch of details, but I’ve seen people explain away Timothy’s use of wine given to him by Paul for his stomach. I’ve seen people explain away the passage where Jesus turns water into wine. It’s really out of a desire to have a witness that’s not stained by the worst abuses of alcohol. On a good side, I do think there is a desire not to be associated with things that are a stumbling block to others, and I think that begins to rule the roost. That sort of exegesis, explaining away instances of wine in the New Testament, but also a desire not to cause a brother or sister to stumble, really became the foreground reason for abstinence from alcohol. But it began in the 1800s during the temperance and prohibition movements.

Michael Horton:
So, Walter, I grew up—my parents, my aunts and uncles—Southern Baptists. I heard very often this idea of the “age of accountability,” that people have to reach the age of accountability before they’re held responsible for their own sins. Is that something that most Southern Baptists believe, and how does that fit with original sin?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah. I’d say many Southern Baptists affirm an age of accountability. Again, if you look at Baptist history, you’re seeing a split between the Particular Baptists and the General Baptists. Particular Baptists will take a more Reformed stance on it and say, “If an infant dies and they were elect, then they’re secure.” Among General Baptists, many hold to an age of accountability, taking passages like where Jesus said, “Let the children come to me.” That use of “tekneon,” people would read certain ideas of protection into that. Some people look back at the bar mitzvah in Israel and say there is some significance to a certain age—at that point, children are held accountable for their sins if they die.

For many, that’s the logic. Baptist practice with children perpetuates this because many Baptists would not allow their kids to take the Supper—they’re unbaptized until they are regenerate. So, the question emerges: Do Baptists raise their children as pagans?

Justin Holcomb:
So, don’t Baptists treat their kids like pagans? You gave us a really good question, now I want an answer!

Michael Horton:
Let’s go to that, but after my question, Justin. Go ahead and clarify—original sin. If a person is not held accountable until a certain age, does that mean they aren’t liable to God’s judgment before then?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah. Again, this is more among those of the Arminian/General Baptistic strain of the denomination and Baptist life in general. They would basically hold to a kind of universal prevenient grace as a means of getting a child to that point. Again, Reformed Baptists would take a more classical Reformed position: If a child was elect, then they’re secure. The General Baptist would hold to universal prevenient grace, which is a requirement to maintain that kind of position, referencing federal headship and provision. Personally, I just don’t find any exegetical grounds for that universal prevenient grace that’s required for that position.

Justin Holcomb:
Okay, back to the pagan kid thing. There are different ways this gets played out. The misconception is, because we’ve seen you with your children—they show up on video sometimes—you don’t treat them as if, and assuming they’re pagan. So, the misconception is, like, “Okay, they’re withholding them from baptism, Lord’s Supper, and treating them like reprobate until proven otherwise.” Maybe fix my misconception.

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I think this comes from a lot of children in Baptist churches. Because of local church autonomy, it fleshes itself out in unique ways in different churches, but there are similarities, for sure. The reason this gets accused of us—this misconception—is that if you come from a Presbyterian church to a Baptist church, you say, “Well, the kids can’t take the Supper, they’re not baptized, we don’t do catechesis in the same way. So what do you do for your kids? Do you just treat them like reprobates?” The reality is, I know the pagan language itself is offensive to some Baptists because it has that Old Testament, Babylonian, Canaanite, Moabite feel to it.

Justin Holcomb:
That language has been used like that? I was just being playful!

Walter Strickland:
Oh, for sure! I would say, if you have a Baptist friend, pose the question in a different way, because they would associate—

Justin Holcomb:
“Why don’t you like children?” Is that better?

Michael Horton:
Is your child a Canaanite?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, yeah—are you training them to be a Canaanite?

Bob Hiller:
Wow.

Walter Strickland:
The reality is, there are ways in which people in Baptist churches strive to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I know that—even because I said the word “pagan” just joking around, and Justin said it back to me, just to get you off the hook with the Baptists who are listening, Justin—

Justin Holcomb:
I was trying to articulate a misconception, not state my question. I don’t want Baptists angry at me. I’ve seen them angry at other people. I don’t want them angry.

Walter Strickland:
And we’re scrappy! So, even though catechism isn’t as ubiquitous as in other traditions, it’s coming back. There’s the New City Catechism, which I’ve gone through with my own children. Any Baptist would say we read Scripture with our children. We encourage people to read Bible summaries—especially to younger children. We have family devotions, family worship. At my house, whenever we have dinner together, it’s followed by reading a Bible summary now, because my youngest is seven. We talk about the meaning and significance for our lives. We have discipleship classes at our church, Christian camps, and summer camps. I remember going to Awanas, and I memorized more Scripture than I can remember now.

Justin Holcomb:
I brought my daughters to Awanas when they were young— specifically so they’d learn the Bible.

Walter Strickland:
Yes. Those are all means that, even though the child might not be—we would say—a member of the New Covenant community as marked out by regeneration by Christ, they’re still participating in learning about Christ, being reared in the fear and admonition of the Lord. In fact, Thomas West and Trevin Wax, both Southeastern PhD graduates, just put out a book called the Gospel Way Catechism: 50 Truths That Take on the World. On the back, it says “Reclaiming an ancient tool of faith formation for our secular age.” You guys are like “Reclaiming? We’ve already been using this thing!” But for a lot of Baptists, it is a sort of reclaiming.

There is a lot of intentionality for families to raise their kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord. It just looks a little different than in your traditions. As we conclude, I’m encouraged to say that while Baptists have our distinctives, we are Catholic—as we said, with a little “c.”

Justin Holcomb:
You just did it again!

Walter Strickland:
I love it! I just—I didn’t have that in my notes to say, but I just did it in there because of our conversation. By this I mean that we too have a place in the universal Church. We enthusiastically affirm the triune God, affirm the Nicene Creed, affirm the hypostatic union that grounds the person and work of Christ that brings about salvation. But to my Baptist brothers and sisters out there, I think we have good hermeneutical reasons to hold our positions, but let’s look for ways to be part of the broader Christian tradition and express our Christian unity—for the one holy and Catholic Church.

So, I ask, in the words of Charles Spurgeon, I pray that we would have unity on essentials, liberty on non-essentials, and charity in all things.