Origin from 1925
The confessional statement of the Southern Baptist Convention, adopted in 1925 on the model of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833 and revised in 1963 and again in 2000. Its preamble presents Baptist confessions as consensus guides rather than creeds, carrying no authority over conscience and open to revision whenever the body that adopted them chooses. The articles run from Scripture, God and salvation through the church, baptism and the Lord's Supper to religious liberty, the family and the cooperation of self-governing congregations. Each of the three versions followed a controversy inside the convention, and the 2000 text went on to be used as a term of service in the denomination's agencies, which is close to the creedal use its own preamble sets aside.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Attributed Author / CompilerDrafted in 1925 by a committee chaired by E. Y. Mullins, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; revised in 1963 by a committee chaired by Herschel H. Hobbs, and in 2000 by one chaired by Adrian Rogers. 1 Historical OriginBuilt on the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833, the most widely used Baptist confession in nineteenth century America, with new articles added on education, stewardship, cooperation and the social order. 2 Form of the ConfessionEighteen articles in the 2000 text, covering Scripture, God, salvation, the church, baptism and the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Day, evangelism, education, stewardship, cooperation, the social order, peace and war, religious liberty and the family. 1 3 Disputed
Point in DisputeWhether requiring agency staff and appointed missionaries to affirm the 2000 statement makes it a creed in the sense its own preamble refuses. 1 One camp reads the affirmation requirement as creedalism by another name, incompatible with the Baptist convictions of soul competency and congregational autonomy that the preamble itself invokes. The other holds that a voluntary association may set the terms on which it employs and commissions people, and that no congregation or individual conscience is bound by it. Both sides argue from the same free-church principle. Status
Standing as a StandardThe confessional statement of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant body in the United States. Its preamble presents it as a consensus guide with no authority over conscience, open to revision by the body that adopted it. 1 Learn More
Three Statements, Three Controversies
Southern Baptists had gone without a convention-wide confession for eighty years when they adopted one in 1925, and they adopted it in the year the teaching of evolution was the loudest question in American Protestantism. A committee chaired by E. Y. Mullins, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, took the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833 as its frame, kept most of its articles, and added new ones on matters the older document had not addressed, including education, stewardship, cooperation between churches and the social order.
The second version came out of a quarrel over a book. Ralph Elliott, teaching Old Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, published a study of Genesis in 1961 that read the early chapters as something other than plain history; the convention repudiated the book, the seminary dismissed him, and a committee chaired by Herschel H. Hobbs produced a revised statement in 1963 that added a sentence making Jesus Christ the criterion by which Scripture is to be interpreted.
The third version came out of the long realignment its winners called the conservative resurgence. A committee chaired by Adrian Rogers produced the 2000 statement, which removed the interpretive clause added in 1963, said that the office of pastor is limited to men, and absorbed the article on the family that the convention had voted in two years earlier. Each revision was presented as clarification rather than change, and each was read by those on the losing side as the opposite.
The Confession That Declines to Be a Creed
Baptists have historically refused creeds on principle. The refusal follows from two convictions the tradition holds tightly: that every believer answers to God directly, without a church standing between, and that each congregation governs itself and cannot be bound by the vote of any body above it. A confession, on that reading, may describe what a group of churches happen to agree on, but it cannot be imposed, and the preamble of the Baptist Faith and Message says as much in its own voice. It calls the statement a consensus of opinion, denies it any authority over conscience, and states that any body adopting it is free to revise it.
What happened after 2000 is why the document is argued about rather than merely read. Trustees of the convention's agencies began requiring employees, faculty and appointed missionaries to affirm the new statement, and a number of long-serving missionaries declined and left their posts rather than sign. Moderates who had already withdrawn to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991 pointed to the requirement as proof of what they had left over. Defenders answered that a voluntary body may set the terms on which it employs and sends people, and that asking an agency's own staff to agree with the agency is not the same as binding a congregation or a conscience.
The dispute has not resolved, and it is a genuinely Baptist one rather than an argument imported from outside: both sides appeal to the same principle of the free church and reach opposite conclusions about what it permits.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Affirmation Of
The article on God the Son confesses a substitutionary death making provision for the redemption of men from sin.
Associated With
1925, Years The Southern Baptist Convention adopted the Baptist Faith and Message in 1925, on the model of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833.
1963, Years The first revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, in 1963. Each of the three versions followed a controversy inside the convention.
2000, Years The second revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, in 2000. That text went on to be used as a term of service in the denomination's agencies.
Belongs to Tradition
The confessional statement of the Southern Baptist Convention. Other Baptist bodies in the United States do not use it and several were formed by people who declined it.
The Southern Baptist Convention's own confessional statement, first adopted by the Convention in 1925 and revised by the Convention itself in 1963 and again in 2000. The creed already carries an edge to the wider Baptist family and to Christianity, but the body that actually wrote and adopted it, and the one whose revisions produced the text as it stands today, is the Southern Baptist Convention specifically.
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