EUROPEANS GATHER IN AMSTERDAM FOR “400” CELEBRATIONS
By Eron Henry

Hundreds of European Baptists travelled to Amsterdam in late July to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the
founding of the Baptist movement. The first Baptist church was founded in the Dutch capital in 1609 by English
exiles who fled religious persecution in their country.
“Amsterdam 400”, held July 24-26 and planned by the European Baptist Federation (EBF), was the forum
through which European Baptists and Baptist leaders from elsewhere gathered to celebrate 400 years of Baptist
witness.
Early Baptist beginnings had a peculiar history on the European continent. Even though the first Baptist church
began in the Dutch republic at the start of the 17th century, it was more than two centuries later before Baptist
roots were planted in the Netherlands as several of the founders returned to Britain or switched affiliation to the
Mennonite church. And other than Britain, the rest of Europe did not have a strong Baptist presence until the
1800s when Johann Gerhard Oncken, referred to as the “Father of German Baptists” and the “Apostle of European
Baptists,” directed and guided the growth of Baptists throughout Germany and across much of continental Europe
for half a century.
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BAPTIST “MAJOR MOMENTS” CONTINUED
Revival was a primary theme in the 18th century, George said. The Philadelphia Baptist Association spread
its influence through many of the colonies, but the fires of revivalism were more of an indigenous movement
sparked by George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, and others. “New Light Baptists” were among those to emerge
from the movement. Led by Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall, their influence moved south into North Carolina
and beyond.
Baptist piety of the time was a corporeal experience, George said. Common Baptist rites such as baptism
by immersion, receiving communion, the laying on of hands, the right hand of fellowship, and foot washing were
all “bodily expressions of faith.”
George said the 19th century was marked by the theme of mission. Many missionary efforts were begun,
along with supportive organizations such as Women’s Mite Societies and the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission
Board.
As mission societies multiplied, so did challenges, George said. Landmarkism promoted a truncated and
isolated form of “Baptistness,” while anti-mission movements “were a recrudescence of hyper-Calvinism.” The
issue of slavery led to division between northern and southern Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. Yet, George
said, “in that cauldron of oppression was born the seeds of revival among African Americans.”
The 20th century was marked by the theme of witness, George said, with influential voices ranging from Walter
Rauschenbusch’s and Helen Barrett Montgomery’s call for social responsibility to Annie Armstrong’s and Lottie
Moon’s fervent appeals for mission support, to the preaching of George Truett, Carlisle Marney, Billy Graham,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others.
Despite those clear voices, George said, “The witness [is] not unsullied.” Tensions remain between sectarianism
and ecumenism, and some Baptists still tend “to the vociferous end” of being schismatic and sectarian.
As North American Baptists face the 21st century, they face the threat of a post-denominational world
“where labels have little value,” and where “the deepest divisions are not between denominations, but within
denominations,” he said.
Baptists in North America must continue to struggle with the question of religion’s role in the public square
and what religious liberty really means, George said – and they must also come to terms with the fact that the
center of gravity of the global church has shifted from the northern to the southern hemisphere, where issues
are often different.
In pondering what theme might characterize the 21st century, George said, “I hope it will be humility and
hope.”
(Tony Cartledge is associate professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in North
Carolina in the United States; contributing editor to Baptists Today; and a member of the BWA Communications
Executive Committee, Resolutions Committee, and Academic and Theological Education Workgroup.)

20 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE
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