Our New England Baptist heritage
My 7th great-grandfather, Francis Marion Dorsett, was a Baptist pastor in England at a time when Baptists were not welcome. Baptists were considered countercultural and subversive to society in general because they did not conform to what the broader culture said was acceptable. Seeking the freedom to worship as the Lord was leading him, my forefather immigrated to America before the Revolutionary War. Though he landed in the Northeast, he quickly learned that religious freedom was not as prevalent in New England as he hoped. This led him to move to the mountains of North Carolina where he bought a farm and made a life for himself. He started a family while farming and serving as the bivocational pastor of a local Baptist church.
Persecuted by Puritans
Many people do not realize that when the Puritans settled in New England, they brought a particular form of Christianity with them that was tied to the state government. Dissenting groups, mostly Baptists and Quakers, were not well tolerated. Though the theological differences were many, perhaps the greatest challenge was over the concept of baptism, hence the name Baptists. From the early 1600s Baptists questioned the baptism of infants, having come to understand that a person should not be baptized until he or she was old enough to make the decision to follow Jesus on their own.
In 1644 the persecution of Baptists was formalized when the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law making it illegal to be a Baptist. The law made it clear that anyone who opposed the baptizing of infants was subject to banishment from the colony, which in that time period meant incredible economic hardship and even increased the possibility of death many-fold. Baptists countered this effort by promoting the idea that religion and politics should be separate institutions and not united into one like the Puritans had established. Many Baptists who refused to have their infants baptized or who turned their backs during church services when the babies of others were baptized, were fined, whipped and threatened with jail time if they would not repent of their troublesome actions. They were denied the right to vote or hold public office. Baptists were a counterculture movement, and yet we survived.
The first American Bible belt
Eventually Roger Williams, a Puritan pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, came to agree with the Baptists on the issue of infant baptism. As a result, he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. He and a group of his parishioners moved to what is now Providence, Rhode Island, and soon established the first Baptist church in America. Other Baptists tried to remain in the Massachusetts area as a witness for the Gospel. They often paid a high price for their biblical stance. In 1654 the president of Harvard College, Henry Dunster, refused to have his child baptized. He publicly declared his opposition to infant baptism and shocked the entire community by adopting the Baptist theological position. The state legislature responded by passing a law saying anyone who refused to baptize their children could not teach in public schools. Dunster was forced to resign. Persecution of one sort or another continued until the outbreak of the Great Awakening in 1740. It was only after that spiritual movement of God that Baptists became more accepted in the broader culture.
In many ways New England became the “Bible Belt” of America and remained that way for over a hundred years. But eventually evangelistic fervor died down, churches began to drift theologically and many of those hard-earned accomplishments of biblically-based churches were forgotten. Today New England is the least-churched region of the nation. Our urban areas consistently rank in the top of various surveys revealing we are the least Bible-minded, the most post-Christian and the least evangelical.
God is still at work
But God has not forgotten New England. Over the last two decades there has been a quiet revival happened in cities, towns, villages and rural areas across New England. Baptists in particular have become significantly stronger than we were two decades ago. The Baptist Convention of New England is now a network of 380 churches in all six New England states that worships in 20 languages each week. It has been a good season for Baptists in New England. The Assemblies of God are also experiencing strong growth, as are non-denominational churches. Many believe we are on the edge of a Third Great Awakening even as the church becomes more and more countercultural in its beliefs and nature. Baptists have always done better when we were on the countercultural side of the equation.
What we must remember as Bible-minded believers is that there is a natural ebb and flow of these things that can only be fully understood by the Lord in His sovereignty. We must remain faithful when our movement is growing and when it is declining. We must remain faithful when the law is on our side, and when the law is opposed to us. We must remain faithful when we are accepted by the broader culture and when we are a countercultural movement. God has called us to serve Him, to proclaim His Word and to live according to His commands, not the dictates of our culture. We must not waver in that. In some seasons it will be easy. In other seasons it will be hard. But let us remain faithful.
Dr. Terry W. Dorsett serves as the executive director of the Baptist Convention of New England.