Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 12:1 (Fall 2007)
Article: The Philadelphia Baptist Association And The Question Of Authority
Author: Gerald L. Priest

DBSJ 12 (2007) p. 51

The Philadelphia Baptist Association And The Question Of Authority

Gerald L. Priest1

The Philadelphia Baptist Association’s2 contributions to the development of Baptist denominationalism in America are legion in number and enormous in impact. The PBA pioneered in educational endeavors by establishing the first Baptist academy in America at Hopewell, New Jersey (1756), and by helping to create the first Baptist college in America at Providence, Rhode Island (Brown University, 1764). It promoted evangelism, church planting, and missionary outreach, laying groundwork for the country’s first Baptist foreign mission society, the Triennial Convention (1814). The celebration of its tricentennial has elicited a renewed appreciation for the PBA, the first formally organized Baptist association in America. Following the pattern of seventeenth century British Baptist associationalism, the PBA was established in 1707 by five Particular Baptist churches as an annual meeting for mutual support in doctrine and practice. Its aim was “to consult about such things as were wanting in the churches, and to set them in order.”3 Orderliness in belief and behavior was of paramount concern to these Calvinistic Baptists recently emigrated from England and Wales. This is reflected in the name by which they were eventually called—“Regular,” as distinct from the indigenous group of revivalist Baptists known as the “Separates,” who were considered irregular in their manner of worship. Walter Shurden referred to the PBA as “the first and, by far, most important Baptist body of its kind in America.”4 Every other Baptist association in colonial America owed its existence

DBSJ 12 (2007) p. 52

in some measure to the influence and example of the PBA. Terry Wolever stated that “in many aspects of both doctrine and polity the Philadelphia Association set the standards of Baptist faith and practice in America.”5 Henry Vedder observed that the association’s adoption in 1742 of the “strongly Calvinistic” Second London Baptist Confession (1689) marked “the turning point” in early American Baptist history, “fixed the character of the denomination,” and overcame the influence of Arminianism.6 “Pretty much everything good in our history from 1700 to 1850, may be traced to its initiative or active co-operation.”7 In his history of the Baptists, David Benedict noted a majo...