American Baptist Churches USA history

Influenced by Carey Congregationalists Adoniram and Ann Judson set sail for India in 1812.

The Triennial Baptist Convention was established in 1814 to support Baptist foreign missions.

In 1824 Rice and others helped form the Baptist General Tract Society, which later became the American Baptist Publication Society and eventually the American Baptist Board of Educational Ministries.

Within the United States John Mason Peck, Isaac McCoy and others exemplified the mission of the American Baptist Home Mission Society–founded in 1832–in evangelistic outreach, ministry with Native Americans and the founding of educational institutions.

By 1833 all of the United States states had, in their constitutions, affirmed the principle of separation of church and state with full religious liberty.

There Judson was instrumental in church growth and discipleship until his death in 1850, and his vital legacy is acknowledged by Baptist leaders there today.

In 1895 three black conventions merged into the National Baptist Convention.

The Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board, founded in 1913, was begun to meet medical, insurance and pension needs of ordained and lay church workers.

The founders originally organized the Fundamentalist Fellowship in 1920 but remained within the American (then Northern) Baptist Convention.

As the acknowledgment that American Baptist life and mission transcends any set geographical area, the Northern Baptist Convention was renamed the American Baptist Convention in 1950.

The American Baptist Churches Mission Center in Valley Forge, Pa., served since 1962 as a major site for the ongoing planning of domestic and overseas mission work, and for the production of various resources designed to help local churches and their leaders in their ministries.

In 1972, in the midst of reorganization that in part reemphasized the congregation-centered mission of the denomination, its name was changed again to American Baptist Churches USA.

Christian History Institute (CHI) is a non-profit Pennsylvania corporation founded in 1982.

In 1998 the denomination adopted an “American Baptist Identity Statement” that sought to summarize the Christian faith representative of American Baptists.

Those remaining within the denomination formed a new regional organization, American Baptist Congregations of the Southwest and Hawaii, in 2007.

In 2008 the American Baptist Churches in the United StatesA. claimed nearly 1.5 million members in about 5,800 congregations.