Baptist Church

The Baptist Church has had its origins traced back to 1609 in Amsterdam with Separatist John Smyth. Baptists believe in adult baptism, rather than infant baptism. The baptism calls for complete emersion of the body and salvation through faith alone. In England, the General Baptists believed that Christ's atonement extended to all, while the Particular Baptists believed it extended only to the elect.

Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in North America in 1638. He broke with the Baptist doctrine shortly thereafter.The First Great Awakening of the mid-1700s renewed the faith in New England and spread it to the South. The Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s took place in the South and was helped by the preachers easing their views on the abolition of slavery.

Ancestral Baptists: Roger Williams, my Gulley line from Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana, the Barlows and, most likely, the Lands and Sumters, all three families with their roots in Virginia and Kentucky and allied to the Gulleys..