Baptists arrived in Arizona as early as 1854 and had started churches there long before the territory became a state. In 1883 Northern Baptists constituted the First Baptist Church of Phoenix with seven charter members. Yet on March 27, 1921 the First Southern Baptist Church of Phoenix was begun. Why did Southern Baptists start a new congregation in Phoenix? The reasons were not cultural or political differences, but doctrinal. In 1996 longtime member Ralph T. Bryan authored a history of this congregation. He gives the following reasons why a new Baptist church in Phoenix was necessary:โAs more Baptists from Southern Baptist churches came to Arizona, the level of disagreement rose. Two aspects of church practices were the most visible points of disagreement โ the two church ordinances โ baptism and the Lordโs supper. All Baptists agreed that baptism meant baptism by immersion and no other form was acceptable. Southern Baptists had always insisted that one could become a member of a Baptist church only through such baptism authorized and administered by a Baptist church. Many Northern Baptists churches adhered to the same practice; however, an increasing number of Northern Baptist churches, while holding to the requirement of baptism by immersion, began to accept the immersion practiced by certain other denominations, a practice soon condemned as โalien immersion.โ Southern Baptists, with rare exceptions, steadfastly refused to accept such practices.As to the second ordinance, the Lordโs supper, Southern Baptist churches were in a great majority practitioners of closed communionโฆNorthern Baptists, on the other hand, had widely opted for open communion; their tables were open to any baptized believer, with a wide range of interpretation depending on the particular church.โ
The First Southern Baptist Church of Phoenix was so strong in these beliefs, the following Wednesday after her constitution, she adopted the following resolution,
โ๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐: ๐กโ๐๐ก ๐กโ๐๐ ๐โ๐ข๐๐โ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ก ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ฃ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ก ๐กโ๐๐ก ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ก๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ฆ ๐กโ๐ ๐๐ข๐กโ๐๐๐๐ก๐ฆ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ข๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐ต๐๐๐ก๐๐ ๐ก ๐ถโ๐ข๐๐โ.โWithin a few years, nine other likeminded Southern Baptist churches had been started in Arizona and in 1926 the Gambrell Memorial Baptist Association was founded. These quotes, provided in the official history of the First Southern Baptist Church of Phoenix, demonstrate that the rejection of alien immersion and open communion were not just the practices of a few Baptists in the Ohio River Valley, but a hundred years ago were the dominant beliefs of the vast majority of Baptists throughout the South.================================== [Document supplied by Ben Stratton, Pastor of FBC, Farmington, KY. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.