Expert: Bruce Gourley - 10/15/2007

Question
Can you tell me who wrote the Baptist Church Covenant and when? It's the one that starts ... Having been led, as we believe by the Spirit of God, to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior and, on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we do now, in the presence of God, and this assembly, most solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another as one body in Christ.
Thanks.

Answer
Among Baptists, church covenants (whether informally or formally) in some local church settings have been in existence for centuries. As to the particular covenant above, the actual authorship and dating is uncertain. What became the covenant you quote (in part) above arose in the late 19th/early 20th century among some local churches (although sharing some characteristics with some local church covenants many years prior), was no doubt refined over time, and by the 1920s had become formalized enough that it was distributed by the Baptist Sunday School Board. Today it is common among local Baptist churches, but the detailed origins of it remain somewhat nebulous. And most  Baptist church members, incidentally, are unfamiliar with it.

Bruce Gourley
www.baptistlife.com
www.centerforbaptiststudies.org
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