American Baptist Churches USA

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.[2][3] Regarded by the more dogmatic Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a heretic for his religious separatism, Williams was banished into the New England wilderness where he and his followers created the settlement of Providence and later, the colony of Rhode Island. Williams is credited with being the founder of the Baptist movement in America, the founder of the state of Rhode Island, and the first highly visible public leader in America to call for the separation of church and state.

The First Baptist Church in America was formed in 1638 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Having a congregational polity, early Baptist churches in America operated independently from one another, following an array of Protestant theological paths, but were often unified in their mission to evangelize. In the 18th century, they sometimes created local congregational associations for support, fellowship, and work (such as the founding of Brown University in 1764). The evangelical mission led to the establishment of the national Triennial Convention in 1814, a collaborative effort by local churches to organize, fund, and deploy missionaries.[4] The ABCUSA descends from this Triennial Convention. Through the Triennial Convention structure 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 1845, a majority of Baptists in the South withdrew support from the Triennial Convention—largely in response to the decision of its delegates to ban slave holders from becoming ordained missionaries—and formed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).[5] The Triennial Convention was loosely structured, and the SBC offered Baptists a more centralized organizational structure for carrying on missionary and benevolent work. In contrast, however, the Triennial Convention afforded local churches a higher degree of local autonomy, a more traditional characteristic of Baptist polity. The majority of churches in the North continued to work through these separate cooperating societies for missions and benevolence.

In 1882, May Jones became the first ordained woman minister in the convention.[6]

At Calvary Baptist Church in Washington DC, the Northern Baptist Convention first met to bring the 19th century mission societies of the Triennial Convention closer together

The Northern Baptist Convention was founded in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1907.[7] Charles Evans Hughes, then Governor of New York and later Chief Justice of the United States, served the body as its first president. The purpose of the Northern Baptist Convention was to bring about a consistent cooperation among the separate Baptist bodies 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."[8] 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 of the churches of the Free Will Baptist General Conference 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 pastors, including the Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago in 1913 and the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1925.[9][10]

Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York affiliated with the ABCUSA.

The name of the convention was changed in 1950 to the American Baptist Convention (ABC), and it operated under this name until 1972.[11] It was the second step at bringing together on a national level Baptists with ties to the mission societies. The ABC was characterized from 1950–66 with annual resolutions at its conventions having to do with the civil rights movement and race relations.

Without exception, these resolutions were progressive and genuinely encompassing. They addressed both the need for individual change in attitude and action, and the need for broader social change that could only be instituted through political action.[8]

As in many cases, the rhetoric of the annual conventions 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 national 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."[8]

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 convention 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 convention.[8]

To reflect its new structure, the convention in 1972 changed its name to the American Baptist Churches USA.[11] Rather than relying on decision-making at the annual convention by whichever churches happened to send delegates, the SCODS restructuring resulted in the following:

A General Board was composed of duly elected representatives from geographically designated districts. Three-fourths of those representatives would be elected by the American Baptist regional bodies; one-fourth would be elected as at-large representatives, or in the official terminology, "Nationally Nominated Representatives." These representatives would be "chosen so as to provide the necessary balance among the Representatives in respect of racial/ethnic inclusiveness, geographic area, age, gender, and desirable skills.[8]

The ABCUSA consists of 33 regional associations and conventions:

LGBTQ issues have been a point of contention in the ABCUSA since the 1987 Biennial Meeting.[26] In 1992, the ABCUSA General Board adopted a resolution that stated, "We affirm that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching."

Since 1995, regional conventions of the church have carried out excommunications of various churches which have become members of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists founded in 1993, an association favorable to inclusion LGBTQ people, a belief contrary to a resolution adopted by the denomination.[27][28]

So far, at least seven regions in the ABCUSA—Evergreen, Wisconsin, Rochester-Genesee, Metro Chicago, Metropolitan New York, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia—support full inclusion of LGBTQ persons into Baptist life.[29] Many ABCUSA churches have also partnered with the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, which formed at the 1993 Biennial Meeting.

However, several other ABCUSA regions and churches have opposed affirmation of homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity. In 2004, the ABC Central Region reaffirmed the 1992 resolution.[30] At its 2005 annual meeting, the West Virginia Baptist Convention, which had a history of proposing resolutions opposing liberal views on LGBTQ inclusion,[26] narrowly rejected a proposal to withdraw from the ABCUSA over its refusal to discipline those regions that have supported LGBTQ-friendly policies.[29] The Indiana-Kentucky region has also proposed a change in the denomination’s bylaws that would prohibit the transfer of churches into another region if removed from the region because of the issue of homosexuality.[29]

In 2006, American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest split from the convention due to the convention's laxity with churches on enforcing a 1992 resolution that opposes the inclusion of LGBTQ people and have been renamed Transformation Ministries.[31] The convention responded that it wanted to respect the autonomy of local churches and that it did not want to carry out excommunications.

Each local congregation is autonomous and permitted to perform same-sex marriages if they opt to do so.[32] For example, Calvary Baptist Church (Washington, D.C.), affiliated with the ABCUSA, performs same-sex marriages.[33] In 2013, an ABCUSA congregation in Washington, DC, ordained the denomination's first openly transgender pastor.[34]

The ABCUSA has consistently allowed each congregation to determine whether or not to perform same-sex marriages, or ordain LGBT clergy.[35] The ABCUSA General Board voted in 2005 to amend the declaration We are American Baptists to define marriage as "between one man and one woman" and maintain that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Biblical teaching."[35] However, the denomination has never officially adopted the board's statement, and has also stated "We respect and will continue to respect congregational freedom on this issue".[35]