To most Baptists the evidence is conclusive that the First Baptist church of Providence, formed in 1639, is the oldest Baptist church in Rhode Island, and the first church of our denomination in America. Roger Williams was baptized by Ezekiel Holliman in March, 1638-9, and about that time the First church of Providence was founded. Soon after the origin of this church, as Baptists generally believe, the First church of Newport was organized. John Clarke, M. D., came from England in 1637, and not long after, taking up his residence in Newport, he became the public instructor of a congregation out of which, in 1644, according to tradition, a church was formed "on the scheme and principles of the Baptists." Rev. Dr. Henry Jackson says of this church, "It occupied a high rank in the community, and drew members from towns remote."The second church in Newport was established in 1656. These three communities comprised all the regular Baptist churches in Rhode Island for many years. The next in age are the churches in Richmond, Warwick, and East Greenwich, constituted in 1743, Exeter in 1750, Warren in 1764, and Shoreham in 1780. Rhode Island is everywhere permeated by Baptist principles, and churches of the denomination are found in all parts of the State. The rights of conscience are everywhere respected, and protected by public opinion and legislative enactments.
There are three Associations of Baptist churches i n Rhode Island, the oldest being the Warren, formed in 1767; the next in the order of time is the Providence, formed in 1843; and the third the Narragansett, formed in 1859. The last report of the Warren Association, in 1880, gives 21 churches, 24 ordained ministers, and 4036 members. In the Providence Association there are 15 churches, 21 ordained ministers, and a membership of 2953. The Narragansett Association has 24 churches, 20 ordained ministers, and a membership of 3850. There are 60 churches, with 10,839 members, in Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Baptist State Convention was made a corporate body by an act of the General Assembly, passed in October, 1826, and is authorized to hold in trust an amount not exceeding $300,000. The Convention gave to feeble churches in the State nearly $2500 during the year. The Rhode Island Baptists contributed funds for the education of ministers from 1792; the plan for starting a society for this purpose originated with President Manning, and two months after his decease it was submitted to the Warren Association by Rev. Dr. Stillman, of Boston. Up to 1816 the concerns of ministerial education formed a part of the regular business of the Association. In that year a separate education society was formed, at which time there was placed in the treasury, in the form of bank stock, the sum of $1800, from which amount various sumshave been withdrawn, until there now remains $1350. Some of the most distinguished Baptist ministers in the country have been among the nearly 150 beneficiaries who have been aided by this society.
The Baptists of Rhode Island legally proclaimed absolute religious liberty for men of all creeds when no government in the world but the one which they controlled pretended to confer such a boon, or regarded it as either wise or just to give it. Roger Williams, in his "Bloudy Tenent," defended this doctrine of his Baptist fathers in the faith with a power which no mind governed by intelligence could permanently resist, and finally that doctrine swept from the statute books of American persecuting States every intolerant enactment. The freedom of conscience demanded by Roger Williams has effected a greater change in the relations between Church and State on this continent than the Declaration of Independence, the armies of the Revolution, and the Constitution of the United States have made in the secular liberties of this great republic. A moral cable, stretching from the Teacher of Nazareth, in Palestine, across the ages, the countries, and the oceans, kept in order by our Baptist fathers of all preceding Christian time, to whom it communicated its blessed news, landed at Providence, R. I., in 1636. Roger Williams received and put in circulation its divine dispatches, and by the authority of the King Eternal, immortal and invisible, demanded liberty for all men to pay their devotions to Deity, without State laws commanding or prohibiting religious worship. All Rhode Island received and obeyed the divine message coming through this glorious cable. Baptists everywhere respected it, and now our whole country has yielded obedience to the heavenly teaching. And, as Rhode Island was the American landing-place of this blessed cable, and her Baptist people the interpreters and propagators of its precious communications,
[p. 978]
we would honor them as the best friends of American liberty and of the universal rights of men.========= [William Cathcart, editor, The Baptist Encyclopedia, 1881; reprint, 1988, pp. 977-978. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
Rhode Island Baptist History
Baptist History Hompeage