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Basic Beliefs
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You become a Southern Baptist by uniting with a Southern Baptist
church, one in friendly cooperation with the general Southern
Baptist enterprise of reaching the world for Christ. Typically
church membership is a matter of receiving Jesus as your Savior
and Lord and experiencing believer's baptism by immersion.
Southern Baptists have prepared a statement of generally held convictions
called The Baptist Faith and Message.
It serves as a guide to understanding who they are. Copies are available
at Southern Baptist churches. The topics here provide only a brief,
partial summary. The full text on
the issue discussed is also available on this website.
The Scriptures
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and
is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure
of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for
its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.
Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals
the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will
remain to the end of the world the true center of Christian union,
and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and
religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony
to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
God
There is one and only one living and true God. …The
eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division
of nature, essence, or being.
God the Father
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe,
His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history
according to the purposes of His grace. …God is Father
in truth to those who become children of God through faith
in Jesus Christ.
God the Son
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ,
He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin
Mary.
…He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and
in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for
the redemption of men from sin.
God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. …He
exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness and of
judgment. …He
enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship,
evangelism, and service.
Man
Man is the special creation of God, in His own
image. He created them male and female as the crowning work
of His creation. …By
his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the
human race.
… The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God
created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man;
therefore every person of every race possesses dignity and is
worthy of respect and Christian love.
Salvation
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man,
and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord
and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption
for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes
regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.
God's Purpose of Grace
Election is the gracious purpose of God, according
to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies
sinners. …All
true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted
in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit will never fall away
from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.
The Church
A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ
is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers,
associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel,
observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws,
exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them
by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of
the earth. Each congregation operates under the Lordship of
Christ through democratic processes. In such a congregation
each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord.
Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both
men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office
of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.
Baptism & the Lord's Supper
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer
in water.
…It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's
faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's
death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection
to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.
The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members
… memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate
His second coming.
Evangelism & Missions
It is the duty and privelege of every follower of Christ and every
church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of
all nations... to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by
verbal witness undergirded by a Christian lifestyle, and by other
methods in harmony with the gospel of Christ.
The Lord's Day
The first day of the week is the Lord's Day. …It
commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and
should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion.
Last Things
God, in His own time and in His own way, will
bring the world to its appropriate end. …Jesus Christ
will return personally and visibly…the dead will
be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness.
The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell.
…The righteous… will receive their reward and
will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.
Education
The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ
is co-ordinate with the causes of missions and general
benevolence … there
should be a proper balance between academic freedom and
academic responsibility. …The freedom of a teacher
in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited
by the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative
nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for
which the school exists.
Stewardship
God is the source of all blessings, temporal
and spiritual; all that we have and are we owe to Him.
Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world,
a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and a binding stewardship
in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation
to serve Him with their time, talents, and material possessions.
Cooperation
Christ's people should … organize such associations
and conventions as may best secure cooperation for the great objects
of the Kingdom of God. Such organizations have no authority over
one another or over the churches. …Cooperation is desirable
between the various Christian denominations.
The Christian & the Social Order
All Christians are under obligation to seek
to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and
in human society... in the spirit of Christ, Christians
should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness,
and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including
adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work
to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the
aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf
of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human
life from conception to natural death...
Religious Liberty
Church and state should be separate. The state owes to
every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual
ends. …A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.
Family
God has ordained the family as the foundational
institution of human society. It is composed of persons
related to one another by marriage, blood or adoption.
Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant
commitment for a lifetime. ... The husband and wife are
of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's
image. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the
church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide
for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit
herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband
even as the church willingly submits to the headship of
Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband
and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility
to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing
the household and nurturing the next generation... Children,
from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage
from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children
God's pattern for marriage.
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