America's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, reeled this week after the Baptist General Convention of Texas voted to redirect $5 million in funding away from SBC operations. The Washington Post cited this reasoning: "As the protesters see it, the fundamentalists who have taken over leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention in the last 20 years have changed the very nature of this 150-year-old denomination, moving it away from one that values religious autonomy."

Not being a Southern Baptist, I have neither right nor reason to take a side on this issue. As a historical journalist, however, I wondered what the "very nature" of the Baptist church was 150 years ago and whether the current SBC leadership has indeed effected a significant change. I discovered that the Texans might have history on their side—but in a non-creedal, non-hierarchical denomination like the Baptists, history isn't necessarily much of an ally.

The history of the Baptist church (if such an entity can even be defined) is notoriously difficult to trace. Many people think Baptists sprang from Anabaptists, but they actually grew more directly out of pietistic, Dissenting traditions in seventeenth-century England (and, to a lesser extent, on the European Continent). Baptists name no founder other than Jesus Christ, and because they existed for many years on the persecuted fringe of society, recognize no founding institutions. Further, Baptists groups have always had a hard time gaining critical mass because they have constantly divided over issues like millennialism (pre- vs. post- vs. a-), the role of emotion and revivalism (Old Lights vs. New Lights), and slavery (Northern Baptists vs. Southern Baptists).

In Christian History ...