This book includes a plain text version that is designed for high accessibility. To use this version please follow this link.
BWA RECOGNIZES “MAJOR MOMENTS” IN THE BAPTIST STORY
By Tony Cartledge

As global Baptists celebrated 400 years of history during the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) Annual Gathering,
two special sessions highlighted significant markers of Baptist life in the BWA’s six regions.
Peter Morden of Spurgeon’s College in London, focused on Thomas Helwys, Anne Steele, and Johann
Oncken, who he said illustrated key themes in European Baptist history.
Helwys and John Smyth founded the first Baptist church in 1609, in the city of Amsterdam. In 1612, Helwys
and a few followers returned to England and organized the first Baptist church on English soil, at Spitalfields. That
same year he published A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, which challenged the king’s right to interfere
with an individual’s religion. Helwys was arrested and thrown into prison, where he died a few years later.
Helwys’ call for religious liberty was “no postmodern mushy of toleration” in which anything goes, Morden
said. Rather, he emphasized the uniqueness of Christ, the priority of evangelism and the advantages of Baptist
distinctives while arguing that no matter what one’s beliefs, it is not the role of the king or state to compel people
regarding their religious conscience.
Steele, an 18th century poet and hymn-writer, knew a life shaped by intense suffering, but expressed profound
faith despite her pain, and, as a result, her hymns gained wide popularity in the early 19th century. Steele’s hymns
express an utter dependence on God that was deeply experiential, reflecting the experiential nature of Baptist
faith.
Morden also mentioned Oncken, a German Baptist who was baptized in 1834 and helped organize the first
German Baptist church, in Hamburg, the following day. Serving as pastor, Oncken integrated evangelism and
social action, offering his church’s facilities for public use and building bridges that led to a sharp decline in
persecution and greater appreciation for Baptists, Morden said.
Helwys, Steele, and Oncken exhibited “key Baptist principles to which European Baptists have sought to aspire,”
Morden said, principles of radical commitment to Christ, patient endurance under persecution, a commitment to
religious freedom, trust in the scriptures as God’s word, and a passion for holistic mission.

CARIBBEAN
Horace Russell, from Jamaica, said Baptists in the Caribbean must be understood in the contexts of slavery
and migration. George Liele, a freed slave from America, came to Jamaica in 1783, and other freed slaves went
as missionaries to the Bahamas.
The early missionaries came out of the experience of an evangelical revival that targeted people of African
descent, Russell said, but did not leave them free to practice their faith as they wished. In 1834, slavery was
abolished in Jamaica, making all slaves apprentices, though still not fully free.
Baptists in Jamaica invited the Baptist Missionary Society in Britain to strengthen the Baptist mission on the
island, and a theological college was formed in 1843 to aid the Baptist cause in the Caribbean in the development
of an educated clergy.
A significant contribution of Caribbean Baptists has been the recognition that ministry has to do “with
development of the human person as a whole,” Russell said, with the church being “a place where people could
develop.”
The Caribbean emphasis on mission and the important role of women’s work continue a holistic ministry of
health and salvation as two sides of the same coin, he said.

ASIA
Ken Manley spoke to the development of Baptists in Asia and the Pacific, the largest of the BWA’s six regions,
and home to more than half of the world’s people. Most Baptists in Asia and the Pacific trace their roots to the
witness of Baptists from Britain or North America, he said, beginning in 1793 with William Carey’s arrival in
India.
Manley surveyed the beginnings and extent of Baptist work in countries across Asia and the Pacific, noting at
several points how mission work in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia began in earnest
after missionaries were forced out of China in 1949 and sought new fields of ministry.
Manley also pointed to indigenous leaders and spontaneous revivals that contributed to the growth and
vitality of Baptist work in Asia and the Pacific. Baptists there, who serve “in some of the poorest and most heavily
populated nations on earth, with their amazing tapestry of religious beliefs and political systems, are an integral
part of the global Baptist story,” he said.

18 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32
Produced with Yudu - www.yudu.com