RICHMOND – The Vatican's recent reaffirmation that the “true church” lies in an unbroken line of succession from Christ and his apostles might resonate in an unlikely place — conservative Baptists who trace the roots of their denomination back to Jesus — and sometimes beyond, to John the Baptist.
Baptist successionism — a theory which emerged on the 19th-century American frontier — claims to find a line of historical continuity in doctrine and practice from Jesus himself to today's Baptist churches. True Christian churches, goes the theory, are marked by distinctive baptistic characteristics, such as autonomous government, closed (members only) communion and baptism by immersion. Such churches have existed since New Testament times and can be traced through history in dissenting groups such as the Donatists, Albigenses, Cathari, Waldenses and Anabaptists.
Virginia Baptist Historical Society
Though generally discredited by church historians, the theory still holds sway among some fundamentalist and conservative Baptists, including some affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Baptist Landmarkists – who were fighting Catholics, Cambellites and other denominations in the mid-19th century — concocted the theory of a succession of churches from the New Testament that were Baptist in everything but name and had kept New Testament Christianity alive amid the corruption of Rome and the false ‘societies' like the Methodists, Presbyterians and others,” said Bill Leonard, dean and professor of church history at Wake Forest University divinity school in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“Since all other churches were false, so was their baptism, so all who joined the Baptist fold had to be rebaptized, even those who had received ‘alien immersion' in false churches,” said Leonard.
Successionism was popularized in a 1931 pamphlet, “The Trail of Blood,” written by Texas Baptist leader J. M. Carroll and occasionally reprinted by fundamentalist churches today. Copies are widely available on the Internet.
The 56-page booklet alleges that the Roman Catholic Church persecuted true baptistic churches throughout history and drove them underground. It includes a detailed chart “illustrating the history of the Baptist churches from the time of their founder, the Lord Jesus Christ, until the 20th century.” The chart identifies Baptist churches with a number of dissenting groups, tracing them with a series of red dots representing the blood of those who have suffered for the true faith – thus the “trail of blood.”
Some Baptist successionists have found their denominational beginnings earlier than Christ, in the Jordan River baptisms of John the Baptist and, in the case of one zealous advocate of the theory, even back to Adam.
Commitment to successionism among many 19th century Southern Baptists was fervent enough to topple a seminary president who questioned its veracity. William Whitsitt, a church historian who became president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1895, wrote that it wasn't until the 17th century that Baptists began baptizing by immersion and that Roger Williams' church in Rhode Island did not initially immerse.
“For many Southern Baptists, Whitsitt's findings were tantamount to heresy,” said Fred Anderson, executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. “He was hounded out of office.”
After resigning in 1899, Whitsitt moved to Virginia, where successionism had made little headway among Baptist churches. He taught philosophy at the University of Richmond – then closely aligned with Baptists – from 1901 until his death in 1911.
Anderson said successionism is “fanciful history without factual basis.”
“With succession theories comes other baggage,” he said: “infant baptism versus believer's baptism with impassioned defenses against ‘pedobaptists'; ‘alien immersion,' or baptism performed by someone other than a Baptist; ‘closed communion,' or the limiting of participation in the Lord's Supper only to those who have been immersed or who belong to a particular Baptist church; and an anti-ecumenicalism which lies just under the surface of many Baptists.”
And, he said, it has led some conservative Baptists to reject the label “Protestant” since successionists don't believe Baptists emerged from the Protestant Reformation.
Most Baptists today would reject a successionism of churches, said Anderson, opting instead for a “spiritual succession.”
“W.W. Barnes, the Southern Baptist historian, described a true historical succession as consisting of a succession of genuine followers of Christ, a succession of Christian experience,” he said.
Leonard of Wake Forest suggested the idea of successionism will not pass away anytime soon. As the Roman Catholic Church loses influence in Western Europe and North America, “it's not surprising that they assert their hegemony as the only real church,” he said. “But Baptists have their own forms of successionism, some based on local church purity, others on theological purity, others on dogmatic assertion. So it goes.”