By Robert Dilday
In 1714, a small group of Baptists in Virginia asked their spiritual colleagues in Britain to send “messengers” to strengthen the fledgling religious movement in the colony. The result was the first documented Baptist congregation in Virginia.
Three centuries later — almost to the day — Baptists marked the anniversary of that event with a two-day observance in Richmond.
“Our people have come a long, long way,” said historian Fred Anderson at a service of remembrance and thanksgiving May 16. “From no people they have become a recognized people. From a despised people, they have become prominent contributors in every walk of life. … From one church have sprung an unknown number, certainly numbering around 3,000 churches and maybe — counting all the various groups of Baptists — perhaps even a million Baptists in Virginia alone.”
Anderson, executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies, was keynote speaker at the service, which also featured an organ recital of hymns familiar to generations of Baptists. Among them was “I’ll Be a Sunbeam,” the theme song of the Sunbeam Band, a mission education organization for children created in Nelson County, Va., in 1886 which spread to most Baptist churches in the South.
The remembrance service, organized by the two Baptist historical groups, was held in the pillared sanctuary of River Road Church, Baptist — a marked contrast to the log structure in Prince George County which probably housed Virginia’s first Baptist congregation.
But those simple beginnings inspired a Christian movement ready to answer key questions of spiritual life, said John Upton, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
“Baptists emerged, in my mind, as a way for each believer to offer God their own answers rather than having some religious organization answer them for us,” Upton, who also is president of the Baptist World Alliance, told participants at the remembrance service. “Baptists gave each believer a way to answer those questions in their many layers rather than just the surface ones.”
In particular, he added, they urged believers to “come as you are and risk a personal new experience of faith — uncoerced.”
The anniversary celebration continued the next day on the campus of the University of Richmond — founded by Baptists in 1830 to train ministers — with about 40 exhibits by Baptist agencies, institutions and churches.
Scattered beginnings
The first Baptist congregation in America is generally thought to be First Baptist Church in Providence, R.I., organized in 1638. Some evidence also exists of a Baptist presence in Virginia in the 17th century, but the group was small, scattered along the south side of the James River, and faced legal restrictions imposed by the official Anglican Church.
Looking for assistance, the struggling group sent a letter to the Baptist church in Canterbury — ironically, the episcopal seat of the Anglican Church — which passed the appeal along to the Kentish Baptist Association in southeast England. On May 19, 1714, the association appointed two “messengers to go to Virginia with all convenient speed.”
Later that month the general assembly of English Baptists endorsed the action, instructing the messengers to “preach the gospel where it is not known; to plant churches where there is none; to ordain elders in churches remote; and to assist in dispensing the Holy Mysteries.”
One messenger died on the Atlantic crossing but the other, Robert Norden, arrived the following spring and by June 1715 had organized a church in Prince George County. The congregation worshipped in a private residence which the county court had approved as “a publick meeting house for these persons called Annabaptists.”
The next year Norden wrote Baptists in England “of the promising prospect to plant the Gospell in those parts” and reported that he had “in a little time baptized and settled 18 Persons in Gospell order.” Norden died in 1725.
A familiar fate
Anderson said it’s uncertain what became of that first church, though some records suggest it was decimated by theological divisions and became extinct.
“The first Baptist church in Virginia appears to have suffered the fate of many Baptist churches — implosion from doctrinal controversy, the relocating of members and the gradual decline of what had been an active congregation,” he said.
Virginia’s legal and religious establishment regarded Baptists as an “ignorant and illiterate sect,” and placed restrictions on their ability to preach and worship. In some places they were tolerated; in others, they were openly persecuted.
The genius of those early Baptists, however, is clear, said Anderson:
• Out of persecution they birthed the principles of religious liberty.
• The essence of their polity was free and autonomous congregations.
• They readily embraced a concept of world mission which took them beyond their small meeting houses.
• A commitment to mission led inevitably to a wide array of Christian educational and benevolent organizations.
• They turned out generations of well-trained, well-equipped laity and clergy.
“Robert Norden was planting seeds of Baptist principles three centuries ago,” said Anderson. “Every phase of Baptist work in Virginia has sprung from those seeds. The seeds are still hidden in crevices and cracks and when conditions are ripe, suddenly Baptist principles and Baptist work blooms once more.”