We’ve looked at English Baptist history through the 17th century and American Baptist history through the 18th century. In both cases, we reached the point in the timeline when Baptists finally had freedom. In England, their freedom came through the Act of Toleration in 1689. In America, their freedom gradually extended to the various states following the Revolutionary War.
This leaves us with another 200 years of Baptist history, which may sound simple enough. But what happens in the Baptist story after complete religious liberty is granted?
If we count only the Baptist denominations worldwide that still exist, the total comes to possibly 80 distinct groups. If we include smaller national or regional bodies and the many short-lived splinter groups over the last two centuries, the number may rise to 500 Baptist denominations.
In other words, the Baptist story over the last 200 years is complicated. I’ve mentioned before that once people—that is, fallible, sinful descendants of Adam—are given complete freedom, proponents of state-enforced religion are given the opportunity to say, “I told you so.” Without external guardrails, people are no longer prohibited from believing anything and everything. Freedom has a cost. Yet, as we’ve seen, without freedom, the cost can be true worship of God. Without freedom, Baptists could not maintain the biblical model of a regenerate church membership consisting only of genuine believers.
Attempting to cover the totality of Baptist history across these two centuries is nearly impossible. Instead, we will follow a particular stream of Baptist life: the Particular Baptists, better known in America as the Regular Baptists. These were Baptists who held to a Reformed, Calvinistic understanding of salvation, a high view of God’s sovereignty, and a confessional identity—namely, adherence to the 1689 Second London Confession.
There are two reasons for focusing on this stream. First, in both England and America, they were what we might call mainline Baptists. They became foundational to the Baptist movement in the 17th century, were among the first to restore baptism by immersion, and produced the most enduring Baptist confession, the 1689 Confession. Especially in early America, they essentially were the Baptists. It took more than 200 years for General or Arminian Baptists to establish a significant presence.
Second, if you happen to be a Reformed Baptist like myself, their story is our story. We hold the same core convictions and the same confession. We are the theological and ecclesiological descendants of the Particular Baptists, and it is fitting to understand our own family history.
The Rise of Hyper-Calvinism
The Baptists now had freedom, and you might expect that this would lead to prosperity and growth. Instead, by the middle of the 18th century, in England, the Particular Baptist churches were in severe decline. By 1750, it’s been estimated that approximately one-third of their churches had disappeared. Baptist leaders described this period as a “melancholy day.” Andrew Fuller later remarked that if the trend had continued, the Baptists would have become “a very dunghill in society.”
What happened? They had grown during decades of persecution, so why did they stagnate once they had freedom? The short answer is Hyper-Calvinism.
The Particular Baptists held a high view of God’s sovereignty. In the Second London Confession, they wrote that “God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass,” yet without becoming the author of sin. Regarding salvation, they also confessed that, “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men … are predestinated, or foreordained to eternal life through Jesus Christ, to the praise of his glorious grace.”
They believed in man’s utter depravity, God’s unconditional election of his people, and that no one can be saved unless God does a gracious work in the heart. As Ephesians 2 says, we are born “dead in … trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Without God granting faith and making us alive together with Christ, we will not turn to him on our own. Romans 3 likewise says, “No one seeks for God” (Romans 3:11).
All of that is true and biblical. However, it is possible to carry the doctrines of grace too far, as in Hyper-Calvinism.
Hyper-Calvinism can be difficult to define because it has degrees. Some carried it further than others, and opponents of the doctrines of grace have often used the term to describe Calvinism in general. For our purposes, the focus is on the primary argument used by many Hyper-Calvinists in 18th-century England.
Many Particular Baptists began to reason that if an unregenerate sinner cannot believe on his own, then he does not have a duty to believe. Their logic was that duty implies ability; therefore, if there is no ability, there can be no obligation. The practical result was a near absence of evangelism. Some pastors would not even exhort the unconverted to repent or turn to Christ during Sunday preaching. Instead, a sinner was expected to examine himself for evidence that God had already saved him before any call to repentance or faith would be offered.
Several influences contributed to this environment. Even the influential Baptist theologian John Gill inadvertently reinforced aspects of the problem through his teaching on eternal justification. He held that God declared his elect righteous when he chose them before the foundation of the world. Though individuals would still need to come to faith in time, this emphasis shifted attention away from the necessity of believing the gospel for justification.
Using the image of a scale, Scripture requires that God’s sovereignty and human responsibility remain in balance. The Hyper-Calvinists tipped the scale heavily toward sovereignty while nearly removing human responsibility.
This was the theological climate among the Particular Baptists in England until Andrew Fuller emerged in the latter half of the century.
Andrew Fuller and the Recovery of Evangelistic Duty
Fuller had grown up in this Hyper-Calvinist context, and as a young man, he was troubled by it. He was often convicted of his sin and wanted to be saved, yet he was afraid to pray to that end. He had been taught that a sinner is utterly helpless until God chooses to save him, so he hesitated to ask the Lord for salvation, fearing that doing so would undermine God’s sovereignty.
He eventually came to faith, but this theological environment followed him into his ministry. For years, he was reluctant to address the unconverted from the pulpit. He would not exhort them to repent or believe because he thought that would compromise God’s sovereignty. Yet this increasingly troubled him. It did not match what he saw in Scripture, where Christ and the apostles preached the gospel indiscriminately and called all people everywhere to repent and believe. As Fuller read Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, and John Owen, he began to suspect that the Particular Baptists in England had drifted off course.
Hyper-Calvinists argued that it made no sense to command a person to do something he was incapable of doing. Fuller responded that the issue was not that sinners cannot, but that they will not.
He illustrated the difference by comparing moral inability with physical inability. It would be unreasonable to command a person to flap his arms and fly because he lacks the natural ability to do so. But the duty to believe in Christ is more like commanding a man to love his neighbor even though he despises him. He has the physical capacity to speak kindly and act justly. If brought before a judge, he could not excuse himself by saying he lacked the ability simply because he did not want to obey. The problem is not the faculty’s inability but the unwillingness of the heart.
In other words, a sinner’s inability to repent and believe is not an excuse; it is the very offense for which God holds him accountable. Therefore, all people have a duty to repent and believe, and ministers should exhort the unconverted accordingly. As Scripture says, “many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). The gospel is to be proclaimed to all, even though only God grants saving faith.
Fuller brought God’s sovereignty and human responsibility back into proper balance, especially through his 1785 work The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. This shift reshaped Particular Baptist thinking about evangelism. They moved from minimal outreach to a robust theology of evangelism, recognizing that God’s sovereignty does not hinder the Great Commission but ensures its success. Christ himself grounded the command to make disciples in his authority: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19–20).
This renewed conviction led to the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) in 1792. If sinners have a duty to believe the gospel, then the church has a duty to proclaim it. Because Baptist churches were independent, they lacked a unified structure for organizing support. BMS enabled representatives to gather funds from churches, much like Paul’s collections, and ensure that missionaries received the resources they needed.
Not everyone agreed with this direction. Pockets of Hyper-Calvinism remained, and at one meeting a preacher reportedly rebuked Fuller, telling him to sit down and insisting that if God intended to save the heathen, he would do so without human aid.
Nevertheless, the broader movement had shifted. Most Particular Baptists now embraced a renewed emphasis on evangelism.
William Carey and the Missionary Partnership
This is where William Carey enters the story. Andrew Fuller remained in England, handling administrative work and raising financial support, while Carey became the society’s first missionary. Carey told Fuller, “I’ll go to India and make disciples, if you’ll stay here and hold the ropes.” In other words, he would go down into the mine, but he needed Fuller’s support to hold the rope.
In 1800, Krishna Pal became the first Hindu convert under Carey’s efforts.
Fuller and the Baptist Missionary Society went on to help translate the Bible into more than forty languages. They also played an instrumental role in opposing and helping end practices such as child exploitation in parts of Asia, in addition to the many people converted through their missionary work. This widespread impact was made possible through the cooperative efforts of many independent churches.
From Congregationalist Missionaries to Baptist Support
The Baptists were not the only ones committed to missionary work at this time. In America, the Congregationalists formed their own missionary organization, and in 1812, they sent missionaries to India, including Adoniram Judson, his wife Ann, and Luther Rice.
A trip from America to India was about a four-month voyage. Both the Judsons and Rice, on separate ships, already knew about William Carey, the Baptist missionary in India. Anticipating possible debate over baptism, they spent the voyage studying their Greek New Testaments so they could defend infant baptism against believer’s baptism.
Instead, as they prepared to argue against the Baptists, they became convinced that the Baptists were correct.
This created immediate complications. Ann Judson was as devoted a Congregationalist as her husband had been. In fact, when Adoniram sought her father’s blessing to marry her, he had written that they intended to go into the world and make Congregationalists of all nations. They had been married only two weeks before departing for India. Now he had to tell his new wife that he had become a Baptist. She did not initially receive the news well, though she eventually came to the same convictions.
A second problem quickly followed. If they were now Baptists, their Congregationalist supporters in New England would no longer provide financial support, leaving them effectively stranded.
When they arrived, they found Luther Rice, who had independently reached the same conclusion during the voyage. Together they made a plan. First, they sought out Carey and his associates in order to be baptized. Then the Judsons would continue on to Burma while Rice returned to America to seek support from Baptist churches.
This created yet another challenge. At the time, there was no national Baptist denomination in America and no centralized missionary organization. Baptist churches were independent and scattered. How could Rice raise support efficiently?
Rice’s account of God’s providence proved compelling. Churches quickly rallied together to form what became known as the Triennial Convention, named for its three-year meeting cycle. Delegates from northern, southern, and middle states participated, and the Judsons received the financial backing they needed.
Judson’s work in Burma was extraordinarily difficult. The environment was hostile to Christianity. He was imprisoned and, at times, tortured. He spent long hours discussing the gospel with Buddhist scholars who acknowledged the reasonableness of his arguments, yet still refused to believe.
He also endured deep personal loss. He buried his children, and eventually, his wife Ann died. For the first six or seven years, he saw no converts. Many would have returned home under such conditions. What sustained him was his conviction regarding God’s sovereignty.
Calvinist theology has often been accused of undermining evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism sometimes did. For Judson, however, confidence in God’s sovereign purpose strengthened his perseverance. He had a low view of his own abilities and did not consider himself a particularly gifted missionary, yet he believed God must have a people in that place.
Like Paul in Corinth, who was told, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you … for I have many in this city who are my people,” Judson continued preaching Christ despite visible resistance (Acts 18:9–10). He trusted that God would give the increase in his own time if he remained faithful in planting the seed.
While others might have concluded that Burma was a place where nothing could be accomplished, Judson remained convinced that the Lord would work, and in time he began to see that work unfold.
Opposition Movements and Renewed Definition
The Baptists in America had organized for missions at home and abroad, but during the first half of the 19th century, several opposition movements arose, complicating the situation.
First, the revivalist preacher Charles Finney adamantly opposed Calvinism. At this point, the vast majority of American Baptists were still Calvinists, so in many ways, he was challenging Baptist identity. He especially rejected the doctrine of total depravity, believing that everyone is equally capable of coming to Christ by an act of free will. Unlike Judson in Burma, Finney concluded that if an evangelist was unsuccessful, the solution was to change methods. He introduced the “anxious bench,” placed at the front of the church, where those under conviction would come, and he would press them to make a profession of faith.
A second group growing in influence was the Free Will Baptists. Though distinct from Finney’s movement, they shared certain similarities. Finney argued that everyone can choose to come to Christ; the Free Will Baptists emphasized that God wants everyone to come. Both groups were seeing rapid numerical growth, which made the Regular Baptists appear passive and even negligent in evangelism, creating pressure within their ranks.
In response, the Regular Baptists drafted and published the New Hampshire Confession in 1833. Often described as “mildly Calvinistic,” it retained the doctrines of grace and a strong affirmation of God’s sovereignty while placing clearer emphasis on human responsibility. It stressed the church’s duty to preach the gospel to all people. The intent was to maintain the theological foundation of the Particular Baptists while demonstrating renewed commitment to evangelism in the face of criticism.
At the same time, a third group was gaining traction among the Regular Baptists. This group opposed the Triennial Convention and most forms of organized missionary work and would eventually be known as the Primitive Baptists.
Their stated objection was that missionary societies lacked explicit warrant in Scripture and represented a human innovation. Yet there are biblical passages—such as Acts 13, where the church in Antioch formally set apart Paul and Barnabas for missions, and 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul coordinated support among multiple churches—that demonstrate principles of cooperative gospel work, even if the exact organizational forms differed in the 19th century.
Beneath their formal objections were additional motivations. One was a more extreme form of Hyper-Calvinism. Daniel Parker, a prominent critic of missionary societies, argued that humanity consisted of two fixed groups, children of God and children of the devil, unchanged since the fall. In that framework, evangelism was unnecessary. When God sovereignly brought one of his people to life, that person would find the church without missionary effort. Most Primitive Baptists did not go that far, but they generally held views that minimized the perceived need for organized missions.
A second underlying concern was the perceived greed of missionaries. In poorer rural congregations, visits by representatives seeking financial support often elicited suspicion and resentment.
As a result, while the Regular Baptists were feeling pressure from the Free Will Baptists’ emphasis on evangelism, their churches and associations were simultaneously fracturing as Primitive Baptists argued that organized missionary efforts were unbiblical.
Another movement soon added further disruption: the Campbellites. Alexander Campbell opposed existing missionary structures but did not merely separate. He sought to reconstruct the church from the ground up. He rejected the Second London Confession and any terminology not found explicitly in Scripture, including terms such as “Trinity” or “effectual calling,” which he dismissed as the “language of Ashdod,” referencing Nehemiah’s description of the Jews mixing their language with that of the Philistines.
In discarding centuries of theological formulation, he altered key doctrines. He reduced faith to mental assent to the historical facts about Jesus and taught that baptism itself was the moment of regeneration and salvation. His slogan, “no creed but the Bible,” proved compelling to many, and additional Baptist churches fractured as a result. Over time, these groups were disfellowshipped and became known as the Disciples of Christ and the Churches of Christ.
Despite the turmoil, these controversies produced constructive effects among the remaining Regular Baptists. Finney and the Free Will Baptists renewed urgency regarding evangelism. The challenge from the Primitive Baptists forced a clearer recommitment to the work of missions. The rise of the Campbellites reinforced the importance of a robust, clearly defined confessional theology. These themes—evangelistic zeal, cooperative missions, and doctrinal clarity—would continue to shape Baptist life in the years that followed.
I’ll provide only a few examples.
Holding the Line and a Reformed Baptist Resurgence
First, we have John Dagg, a blind and physically frail man who could barely speak above a whisper. In 1857, he wrote Manual of Theology, rigorously defending the doctrines of grace and historic orthodoxy. His work had a significant influence on the newly established Southern Baptist denomination and helped keep it grounded in sound theology, at least for a time.
Second, we have Charles Spurgeon in London. When he opened the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861—essentially a megachurch that stood in contrast to the prevailing Hyper-Calvinism and anti-evangelism of the day—his first sermon series focused on the doctrines of grace. Later, as English Baptists began drifting from orthodox Christianity and questioning the authority of Scripture, Spurgeon held his ground. His church was eventually forced to leave the Baptist Union. As Spurgeon insisted, peace could not be made with error.
Throughout the 20th century, both English and American Baptists continued to experience a drift toward Modernism. By this, I mean the growing tendency to accept the world’s criticism of Scripture. When the world claimed that God could not have created the universe in six days, liberal Christianity often responded by reinterpreting the creation account as symbolic. When the resurrection was questioned, some redefined it as merely spiritual. In effect, the authority of Scripture was set aside, and Christianity was increasingly reduced to a movement focused primarily on temporal social concerns.
From individual churches to entire denominations and seminaries, confessional commitments were often abandoned, and evangelism was reframed around social reform more than the salvation of sinners. Even so, within Baptist life, there remained a remnant of Dagg- and Spurgeon-like figures who continued to call churches back to their Particular Baptist roots.
By the mid-20th century, what could be described as a Reformed Baptist resurgence began to take shape. Both independent Baptist churches and congregations within established bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention resisted Modernism and deliberately reclaimed their historical confessional identity. Many bypassed the New Hampshire Confession and other later summaries in favor of formally adopting the 1689 Second London Confession.
In doing so, they returned to the period when Baptist theology had been most carefully defined, while also learning from the errors of Hyper-Calvinism and the anti-missionary movement. They retained a clear commitment to evangelism and missions alongside their renewed confessional convictions.
With this resurgence came a renewed emphasis on the historic Baptist distinctives that had marked the Particular Baptists from the beginning: orthodoxy, regenerate church membership, believer’s baptism, the sovereignty of God in salvation, confessional identity, the authority of Scripture, and a sustained commitment to evangelism.
Our Challenge in the 21st Century
Here is the challenge of Reformed Baptists in the 21st century. We now enjoy the hard-fought religious freedom secured by our Baptist forefathers, but will we succumb to the pressures of this world to abandon “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” or will we hold the line? (Jude 3). Will we remain dedicated to the robust biblical theology of the 17th-century Particular Baptists? Will we remain committed to carrying out the Great Commission as fully as Andrew Fuller and William Carey? Better yet, will we allow our understanding of God’s sovereignty to fuel our evangelistic efforts as it did for Adoniram Judson?
It is unlikely that it will ever be fashionable to be a Reformed Baptist, but as we have seen, faithfulness has never depended on popularity, only conviction. As Charles Spurgeon said, “To be faithful to God in a world that is departing from Him is to be willing to stand alone, if need be.”
