Are Baptists Protestants?

Since I believe that Baptist are the nearest to the New Testament Church, and never went through the Protestant Reformation and was never a part of the Church of Rome, I am not a protestant; I am a Baptist.

Cheers,

Jim

 

SaltCity, I think we have several threads on this if you want to drag one of them up.

Joshua

 

SALTCITYBAPTIST,

Speaking for myself, I do not consider the kind of Baptist I am to be Protestant. We do not identify with the theology of the Protestant Reformation and we believe our history pre-dates the Protestant Reformation.

John the Baptist was not the first pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem. He was the man sent from God to baptize the Jews who became the nucleous of the church at Jerusalem and Jesus was it's first pastor, followed by the twelve apostles.

I do believe that the Jerusalem church was "Baptist" in it's theology - if by "Baptist" we mean the mainstream historical Baptist doctrine and eccesiology.

I might note, that while there is a wide divergence among "Baptists" in their actual beliefs, most of the confessions of the major Baptist bodies are suprisingly similar. This stems from the fact that when these confessions were forged Baptists were a more biblically oriented people than they are today and more homogeneous in their doctrine.

Mark Osgatharp

 

Yes.

 

Protestants are a part of organized religion. Baptists are NOT an organized religion. Anyone who thinks so has never been to an associational E-board meeting.

 

I was a nominal "protestant" before I was saved, now i am a Christian by conversion and Baptist by conviction. I identify with very little of my protestant past, and no longer consider myself protestant, but Baptist.

 

I used to believe we were protestant, now I do not.

Bryan
SDG

 

Yes and No. In a theological sense, we are Protestants and we clearly identify with other protestant denominations on important doctrinal positions. In an historical sense, we have a mixed bag. Some early Baptists were formerly Roman Catholic and some were never a part of the RC church. If you were a part of the RC church and wanted out, then you would be a protesting against it (protestant).

No. I’ve never heard of this assertion. John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod before the church was ever established. Baptists do not get their name from “John the Baptist”. It was a name that was given by opponents to ridicule Christians that practiced believer’s baptism. The earliest name given to these Christians was “Ana-Baptist” (re-baptizer) because they re-baptized folks that were baptized as infants in the RC church. Eventually, Baptists adopted the name for themselves.

 

Some historians contend that the Baptist church started by John Smyth never identified with the Anabaptists (Mennonites) even though Smyth (who later thought he shouldn't have baptized himself) eventually did. Even if it did, Helwys' Baptist church back in England didn't.

Either way, the Baptist church emerged out of the English Seperatist movement and as a part of the so called "radical reformation." Whether or not that makes it protestant with a small "p" or a capital "P" is sort of just semantics.

 

i protest what the catholic church taught and teaches. i am a protestant.

 

Yeah, we are. You see, we came from a group known as the Anabaptists that came around the time of the Reformation. We derived from there, but we are extremely different. I don't know if we branched off or formed a seperate denomination from the concept, but that's our roots, or so I've been learned!

-CubeX

 

Read the book "Trail of Blood" by J.M. Carroll.

This man spent years of research and eventually compiled the largest privately owned Christian library to date. (Upon his death, his books were donated to the library at Southwestern Theological Baptist Seminary). I believe his work to be accurate as he attempts to trace the history of the Baptist Church all the way back to Christ and the Apostles. I believe you can find the entire booklet online here at Trail of Blood

 

My vote would be yes and no.
I don't consider myself to be an "organizational" protestant. There were Baptists before the Reformation. However, Baptists were actually "protesting" the RC long before the "organized" Protestants.
I would not consider Baptist to be Protestant per se in our day. We are not Lutherans or Presbyterians or any of the others.
So, as someone else said, we could be called "protestants" (small "p") but we are not "Protestants" (capital "P")

 

I found this article great in refutation of J.M. Carrol's Trail of Blood

It's perspective bases Baptist History from the Reformation. You can find it by clicking Here-Baptist

 

I'm not sure to what affect Baptist assemblies existed outside the RCC. But I do know personally I have been affected by the protastant reformation and I personally have had my spiritual walk affected by reading some men such as Luther, Calvin, Edwards, etc, so I don't distance myself from the reformation.

 

The articles present the other view of Baptist history but does little to refute Trail of Blood. Trail of Blood's argument is that through church history there has been the original church called by many different names practicing Baptism by immersion and being persecuted by others, and today this church is the Baptist church. This article completely ignores this and instead offers the more genuaraly accept history of the movememnt forming in England. The one group that this article does examine that ToB links together is the Anabaptist, and there are many who will disagree on what they say about them.

I'm not saying it's a bad article, well written in defense of their position, but it is hardly a refute to ToB becasue it adress different issues.

Bryan
SDG

 

I took a protastant reformation class and read some of the works of some anabaptists. Some of them were sound and some of them were straight heresy. I am not sure I wish to be aligned directly with this group.

 

Just because a group was practicing Baptism by immersion and was being persecuted does not mean they are predecessors of today's "Baptists". Many of the groups listed in Trail of Blood would be considered heretical by today's Baptists.