The “mother church” of Southern Baptists—from whose pulpit legendary pastor Richard Furman once defended the institution of slavery—will host Baptists of multiple races, denominations and regional identities for a historic conference in August.
The First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C., is the site for the Aug. 1-3 “Baptist History Celebration.” The congregation, founded in 1682 in Maine and relocated to South Carolina in 1696 to escape religious persecution, is the oldest Baptist church in the South and one of the oldest in the United States. It still meets in a sanctuary that was completed in 1822, under Furman's pastorate.
The conference will feature speakers and historians from a broad array of Baptist groups—including Southern Baptists, American Baptists, African-American Baptists, independent Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Swedish Baptists and Primitive Baptists. It will also include representatives from para-denominational groups such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist World Alliance.
Leaders from more than 20 Baptist groups have been planning the event for the past five years. It will commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Philadelphia Baptist Association—the first association of Baptist churches in the United States.
According to a statement about the conference on its website (www.baptisthistorycelebration.org): “Never in the history of the Baptist faith has such a meeting been attempted. The cooperative spirit among the steering committee is a result of their interest in Baptist history and the promotion of our grand heritage.”
Emmanuel McCall, the CBF's current moderator and a speaker at the conference, said in a press release that the conference's diversity is itself exemplary of Baptists' history. “The Lord has done great things with us through cooperating, rather than through forced, judicatory structure,” he said. “The Charleston event helps us to see how God has used us, sometimes in spite of ourselves. We will celebrate where God has brought us from, and look forward excitedly to what God will do.”