Baptists

Baptists are a denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency (the responsibility and accountability of every person before God), ''sola fide'' (salvation by faith alone), ''sola scriptura'' (the Bible is the sole infallible authority, as the rule of faith and practice) and congregationalist church government. Baptists generally recognize two ordinances: baptism and communion.

Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today may differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship. Baptist missionaries have spread various Baptist churches to every continent. The largest Baptist communion of churches is the Baptist World Alliance, and there are many different groupings of Baptist churches and Baptist congregations.

Historians trace the Baptists to the early Puritan Dissenters of the Church of England, more specifically, to the dissenting church in Gainsborough led by the cleric John Smyth, which, with other Puritan leaders and churches, was exiled to Amsterdam in 1607. In accordance with their study of the New Testament, they rejected paedobaptism and instituted baptism only of professing believers. The Baptists spread across England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English Dissenters under James I. Provided by Wikipedia