Leland's Attempted Baptist Glossary

The purpose of this page is to try to elucidate the senses in which I use various terms pertinent to my faith and, to a lesser extent, to clarify the senses in which I understand others to use them. It is not intended as in any way authoritative or exhaustive, nor as a replacement or competitor for dictionaries and encyclopædias.

I'm a Baptist (at least, I say I'm a Baptist; many fundamentalists would dispute my right to the term! There is no Baptist Pope to tell us infallibly ex cathedra whether or not we are really truly Baptists); however, there is a fair amount of agreement as to what the general topics called "Baptist Distinctives" are. The most commonly cited list is the list of which "BAPTISTS" is an acronym. According to this list, Baptists believe in:

Biblical Authority
Autonomy of the local church
Priesthood of the believer
Two Ordinances (Baptism and the Lord's Supper)
Individual Soul Liberty
Saved, Baptized Membership
Two Offices (Pastor and Deacon)
Separation of Church and State

How these are interpreted, applied, and prioritized varies rather more widely than does the set itself.

ABC

abbreviation of "American Baptist Churches [in the USA]", formerly "American Baptist Convention", prior to that "Northern Baptist Convention", lineal descendant of the Triennial Convention of early American Baptists.

American Baptist

this generally refers to membership in ABC, not necessarily residence or citizenship in the United States. It is usually to be taken as implying "as distinct from, or even as opposed to, Southern Baptist". It should be noted that, while ABC is on average the least fundamentalist Baptist denominational association in the United States, there is also the American Baptist Association, a smaller group which is among the most "ultraorthodox" Landmark Baptist groups, having split from the Southern Baptists in 1905 because of the SBC's doctrinal laxness.

AWAB

the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, of which I am an individual member. The Association is dedicated to seeking to counter and overcome discrimination against and condemnation of GLBT persons in the life of American Baptist Churches. Two Seattle churches, First Baptist and University Baptist, are affiliated with AWAB, and there has been considerable activity on the part of some of the other churches in our region to have them censured and/or expelled from ABCNW. At the moment it appears that the near-term result will be to split the region into two regions, one of which will be less tolerant of sexual minorities than the other.

Baptist World Alliance

The main international association of Baptist conventions; it is composed of affiliated conventions, not individual churches. Fourteen USA groups, including both ABC and SBC, are in the BWA, which has a total of 196 member groups worldwide, representing about 43 million individual Baptist church members (and a considerably larger population if one includes unbaptized children and spouses)...

CBF

the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, one of the main associations of Southern Baptist churches that have become dissatisfied with or alienated by the fundamentalist bent of the SBC in recent years.

Dual Alignment

simultaneous affiliation with more than one Baptist body at the same geographical level. A church that belongs to both the ABC and the SBC, or to one of the National Baptist bodies as well as either the ABC or the SBC, is said to be dually aligned. Given the Baptist autonomy of the local church, there is no barrier to the number of different conventions a church could affiliate with if the conventions had no objection — and as long as you don't ordain gays or women, and do contribute liberally (yikes! there's gotta be a better term for that!) to the convention's pet missionaries, there's no shortage of conventions that would love to have you. There are also a small number of Baptist churches that are dually aligned with a non-Baptist denominational group. Thus, some liberal Baptist churches are dually aligned with the United Church of Christ, in one case even with the Unitarian/Universalist Association, while some less liberal churches are dually aligned with the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and in at least one case the Lutherans.

KELI

Kristana Esperantista Ligo Internacia (International League of Christian Esperantists) the main worldwide asssociation of Protestant (and other non-Roman-Catholic) Christians. Dia Regno (God's Kingdom) is its official periodical publication. I have contributed to an ecumenical hymnal (Adoru) shortly to be published by KELI and IKUE, the Catholic Esperantist group.

National Baptists

Generally this means "Black Baptists", since three of the largest predominantly African-American Baptist conventions are the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., the National Baptist Convention of America (Uninc.), and the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

SBC

the Southern Baptist Convention, originally founded by state Baptist conventions that had withdrawn from the Triennial Convention in protest against the decision of the mission societies associated with the Triennial Convention to refuse to accredit missionaries who were slaveholders.

Southern Baptist

this refers to affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention or membership in a church so affiliated. In my usage it is usually in contrast to "American Baptist" meaning ABC. It is also as distinct from other Baptist groups in the South, including e.g. the Primitive Baptists. Note that a church in Pensacola that is affiliated with "ABC of the South" is an "American Baptist church", whereas a Boston church that is affiliated with the "Baptist Convention of New England" (a regional body of the SBC) is a "Southern Baptist church" even though it's in the North. It is possible for a church to be dually aligned with ABC and SBC, but this particular configuration is fairly unusual in most parts of the country.

Swedish Baptists

Within the United States, this term refers to the Baptist General Conference, a convention that originated with Swedish-speaking immigrant Baptist churches that chose to form a separate convention rather than affiliate with ABC.