Religious Beliefs and Healthcare Decisions

Baptists trace their origins to early seventeenthcentury English Puritanism with the baptism by immersion of Thomas Helwys and John Smyth in Holland in 1607. Baptists and other dissenters believed the English Reformation had failed to achieve sufficient moral purity and doctrinal integrity. They also resisted the efforts of the Crown to impose uniform religious beliefs and practices through the Act of Conformity. Along with Quakers and Congregationalists, Baptists emerged among those who rejected established religion and creed-oriented religious faith. They held strongly to beliefs in a free church and to the Bible instead of creeds as their central authority. Baptists in North America began with Roger Williams, who founded the first Baptist congregation in what is now Providence, Rhode Island, in 1639. He remains perhaps the central inspiration for contemporary Baptists with his insistence on religious liberty for all people and his commitment to intellectual integrity beyond doctrinal rigidity or creedal conformity. His influence on Baptist theology and identity reaches far beyond the short period during which he identified himself as a Baptist before declaring himself a “Seeker.” His flight from the Puritans and his staunch defense of the rights of native Americans still influence those who think of him as the paradigm of what it means to be an authentic Baptist in contemporary America. The Southern Baptist Tradition