Seventh-day Baptists

Seventh-day Baptists are Baptists who keep the Sabbath on Saturday , the seventh day of the week according to Judeo-Christian tradition .

history

The first recorded mention of the Seventh-day Baptists was the Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church in London in 1653 under the direction of Dr. Peter Chamberlen. The first church of the Seventh Day Baptists in America was established in December 1671 at Newport ( Rhode Iceland established). Stephen Mumford, a Seventh-day Baptist from England , came to Rhode Island in 1665. He did not find a "seventh day" church there and joined the ("first-day") Baptist Church in Newport, then presided over by Pastor John Clarke. They worked together until 1671. Subsequently, Mumford and his followers withdrew and founded the First Seventh Day Baptist Church of Newport .

Other parishes sprang up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey , and soon spread north to Connecticut and New York , and south to Virginia and Carolina.

As a split from the Anabaptist-Pietist Schwarzenau Brethren (Tunkers) who had emigrated from Germany and Switzerland, a Sabbath-keeping community was created in Ephrata (Pennsylvania) in 1735 with the seven-day Tunkers , to which the local Ephrata Cloister also goes back. The Ephrata ward also joined the Religious Society of Seventh Day Baptists in 1814 .

A general conference of Seventh-day Baptists was organized in 1801.

Joseph Bates , co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventists , adopted the Sabbath idea from the Seventh-day Baptists.

distribution

In 1995, Seventh-day Baptists in the United States had 78 churches with 4,885 members, 2 churches with 55 members in the UK and one ward with 40 members in Canada . In other countries, too, congregations of this free church were established . The World Association of Seventh-day Baptists was founded in 1964/1965 and has 50,000 members in 17 member organizations in currently 22 countries. In Germany, however, no more parishes are known, but in 1939 there were 28 parishes in Germany with 533 believers. These were mostly former Adventists, as was their leader Ludwig Richard Conradi . However, the communities disbanded completely over time. At the moment there are only a few Sabbath-keeping Baptists in Germany - some with overseas memberships.

In addition to viewing the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, Seventh-day Baptists agree with other Baptists in basic beliefs.

The general conference of the Seventh-day Baptists is therefore also a member of the Baptist World Alliance , the Baptist World Federation .

literature

A Choosing People: The History of Seventh Day Baptists , by Don A. Sanford
Baptists Around the World , by Albert W. Wardin, Jr.
Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America , by Albert N. Rogers
The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness , by H. Leon McBeth

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Note: Although ISO 8601 applies in many countries around the world that the week begins on Monday, all Christian churches still keep Sunday as the first day of the week.

[1] Note: Although ISO 8601 applies in many countries around the world that the week begins on Monday, all Christian churches still keep Sunday as the first day of the week.