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The Baptist World Alliance was founded in London, during this first Baptist World Congress in July 1905. Every five years since, the BWA holds a Baptist World Congress in different locations around the world, and multiple international meeting and programs are held in the times between Congresses. [6] [7] [8] [9]
The largest group of Baptist churches is the Baptist World Alliance, and there are many different groupings of Baptist churches and Baptist congregations. Historians trace the earliest Baptist church to 1609 in Amsterdam , with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. [ 3 ]
Since the early days of the Baptist movement, various denominations have adopted common confessions of faith as the basis for cooperative work among churches. [1] The following is a list of confessions that have been important to the development of various Baptist churches throughout history.
The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history, which is roughly 7,000 years old. [1] A lack of written records results in most of the knowledge of pre-historic religion being derived from archaeological records and other indirect sources, and from suppositions. Much pre-historic religion is subject to continued debate.
As of 2014, approximately 15.3% of Americans identified as Baptist, making Baptists the second-largest religious group in the United States, after Roman Catholics. [1] By 2020, Baptists became the third-largest religious group in the United States, with the rise of nondenominational Protestantism.
In 2022, its self-reported membership stagnated with an estimated 3.5 million members in approximately 4,000 churches according to a separate study by the Baptist World Alliance. [1] A prior 2020 study from the Association of Religion Data Archives numbered 225,776 members in 389 active churches in the United States. [14]
The history of Baptist Christianity in Sichuan (or "West China") [a] began in 1890 when missionaries began arriving from the United States. Baptist missionaries in Sichuan were organized under the American Baptist Missionary Union , later renamed American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.
Robert E. Johnson, A Global Introduction to Baptist Churches, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2010; J. Gordon Melton, Martin Baumann, Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, ABC-CLIO, USA, 2010