Baptist Distinctives
The convictions that set Baptists apart, where they come from in Scripture, what they cost those who held them, and why they still matter.
Recommended Order
Study in any order. This path builds each topic on the one before it.
A Baptist is a Christian who holds the Bible as the only final authority for faith and practice, and who gathers with other saved and baptized believers in a self-governing local church under Christ.
The Bible is the only final authority for what Christians believe and how churches and believers live, so every tradition, teacher, experience, and confession must answer to it.
A New Testament church is made up of people who have been born again and baptized on profession of faith, so that no one enters it by birth, by infant baptism, or by law.
Christ gave His churches two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, as commanded pictures of His death, burial, and resurrection that show grace already received and never give it.
Every soul is free from human force in matters of faith because every soul must answer to God, and every believer may come to God through Christ alone, yet this freedom is answerability to God, never a license to believe anything.
Under Christ the Head and by His Word, pastors lead and deacons serve, and the gathered congregation holds the final earthly decision on the matters He entrusted to the church, such as its members, its discipline, and its officers.
Separation of church and state means that Christ rules His churches through His Word and that civil government has no authority over the soul, not that believers must leave public life.
Baptist churches come from the church Jesus started, which He promised would never cease, and English Baptists enter the documentary record in the early 1600s, without ever having been a branch of Rome.
Biblical separation is the believer's call to belong wholly to God, which means turning from the world's sinful ways and from spiritual partnership with unbelief and persistent disobedience, always in love and never in pride.
The Baptist family includes Southern, Free Will, Reformed, Independent Fundamental, and many other Baptists, joined by shared convictions and no headquarters. We are non-denominational Baptists, and we can love them as kin while saying plainly where we differ.
Being a Baptist matters because the convictions behind the name are obedience to all that Christ commanded, and they guard the Gospel and send it to the nations, while the name itself has no merit and leaves no room for pride.