Uncle Vivian was our family’s historian. He was my great-grandfather’s half-brother. As a boy, I heard him say that “our family” escaped persecution in England and lived for awhile in Amsterdam. He was referring to the branch of our family which has been Baptist for as long as there are any records.
While attending the Baptists’ 400th anniversary celebration held in Amsterdam, I saw the list of English refugees led by John Smyth and their appeal to “the Waterlanders” to live among the Mennonites. There were no familiar surnames within my family on that list. Of course, a family has many branches; but the more I try to recall the words heard as a boy, I think Uncle Vivian must have been referring to Baptists in general as “our family.”
Fred Anderson
|
It is enough because “our family” and the Baptist family are very much one and the same. And it is a big family. There are many tribes. In the membership of the Baptist World Alliance, there are churches, conventions and unions which list over 37 million members; and all Baptist unions are not affiliated with the BWA. “Our Baptist family” includes many languages and races. While in Amsterdam, I heard that “there is not one Europe but many Europes.” The same could be said of the Baptists. They are many and varied.
During the visit to Holland, I heard a fascinating lecture by Kirsten T. Timmer, a Dutch school teacher. She is a Ph.D. student in church history at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute in Texas, where Karen Bullock, chairman of the BWA’s Heritage and Identity Commission, is her professor. Bullock encouraged her student to explore the local archives in Amsterdam and she discovered several early documents associated with Smyth’s group. She made facsimile copies so that people could handle the documents and attempt to read the ancient handwriting. It was as close as we may ever come to reaching out and touching our earliest Baptist forebears.
The documents refer to “the English affair,” expressing the Mennonites’ apprehension over acceptance of these refugees. The peculiar act by Smyth of baptizing himself did not set well with some Waterlanders. The English group settled for awhile at the East India Bakehouse, owned by a Mennonite, and located near the Amstel River. They lived and worked in this bakery community. Thomas Helwys, another Englishman, was a prominent member of the group; but in time, he, too, had a parting of the ways with Smyth. In 1611 Helwys returned to England and led in the constituting of the first Baptist church on English soil at a place called Spitalfield in London. He was courageous in publishing his views on freedom of conscience; and his convictions eventually led to prison and death.
Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, the Smyth group continued to be the focus of concern among the Mennonites, a group which believed in seeking consensus. In one of the early documents from 1610, a Mennonite writes: “Your letter with the request to come there to you to discuss the English affair, has reached us. … It seems they [our teachers] prefer to have first the articles which have been given to you by the English in order to review these same with the brothers so that afterwards there would come no trouble out of it since they are worried.”
“I am concerned that they do not take it (so it appears) on the aspect of baptism, [that is] why I hope so that they can be satisfied with our belief and household, that it could come indeed to a good end by letters as God wills. … When we do something without our congregations, so we get certainly trouble for we have many hard heads to which we have to see a bit, and it is not possible to live always in strife. …”
The Mennonites need not have worried too much about the strange Englishmen. Smyth died in August 1612; and the little group of his followers become absorbed into the Mennonite fellowship. Teun van der Leer, a Dutch Baptist leader, gave a spirited history lecture to the BWA Heritage and Identity Commission and he insisted that the Smyth and Helwys story of 1609 “is not a Dutch story.” He cited several groups of English separatists who sought a safe haven in Amsterdam. “But all of them left sooner or later and they had no lasting influence on Dutch church life.” It was not until 1845 that a Baptist church was planted on Dutch soil.
Sometimes it seems that a people eager for a founder and desirous of discovering a family history have landed upon John Smyth and Thomas Helwys and have made more out of their story than they may have even desired. Leon McBeth in his landmark history of the Baptists gave them their just due: “Smyth recovered believer’s baptism, but it was the Helwys group that continued the Baptist beginnings.”
There are many branches and many personalities in the Baptist family’s history. As its part in the 400th anniversary celebration, the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies published an edition of Heritage Seekers magazine for families. In the magazine there is a board game complete with playing pieces. Children and adults can play together. A roll of the dice determines how far a player can move and the squares tell a lot of Baptist history in a few words: “Smyth and Helwys visit” or “Attend Amsterdam 400” or “Persecution — lose 1 token.”
My granddaughters, Emily and Cassidy, played the game with me; and I soon discovered that I needed to improvise on some of my own rules. But we had fun, tried to stay out of jail and, after a few rounds, they let Papa win. Together we were learning about “our family.”
(Kirsten Timmer’s findings about the early Baptist documents are included in the journal Baptist History & Heritage, Winter 2009, which could be ordered for $9 from the Baptist History & Heritage Society, 3001 Mercer University Dr., Atlanta, GA 30341. The issue includes other interesting articles on early Baptist history. Heritage Seekers magazine for children and families can be ordered for $7, including shipping, from the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies, P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.)
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.