Baptists in Australia
© David Parker Oct 1999
Seventh Day Baptists in
Australia
Unofficial Web site: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sdbbris)
The Seventh Day Baptists date from earliest days of the Baptist movement when in 1653 their first church, Mill Yard Church, Whitechapel, London was established under the leadership of the remarkable and learned royal physician, Dr Peter Chamberlin. Never strong, they had largely disappeared from England by the mid-18th century.
They appeared in the United States in 1671 with a church planted in Newport RI, and made some progress in Philadelphia and New Jersey; a General Conference, based in Wisconsin, was established in 1801, but they began losing members to the Seventh Day Adventist Church during the 19th century; ironically, it was probably a Seventh Day Baptist who introduced the Adventists to the concept of worship on the seventh day. By the mid-1940s, numbers had fallen to less than 7,000. The General Conference is also a member of the Baptist World Alliance. Last official figures indicated a membership of 5,000 in 68 churches.
This group differed from other Baptists mainly on their attitude to the day of worship. They included people of both Arminian and Calvinistic convictions in their ranks and strongly emphasised the freedom of each congregation to govern itself and the absence of binding creeds. Some of early English Seventh Day Baptists were associated with radical millenarians who flourished in the turbulent times of the mid-17th century; one of their number, John James was hung drawn and quartered in 1661 for preaching radical eschatological views. During the 19th century, Seventh Day Baptists in USA opposed alcoholism, slavery and secret societies.
Australia and New Zealand
The Australasian Conference, which became a member of the Baptist World Alliance in 1983, consists of churches in Australia and New Zealand. The work in NZ, which affiliated with the General Conference in USA, commenced in Auckland and Christchurch in the 1930s amongst former Seventh Day Adventists. These NZ churches were committed to missionary work, with fields in Malawi, Nigeria and India. They were also involved in the formation of churches in Australia.
The
first fellowship was formed in August, 1975 in Bundaberg, Qld. when, with
assistance from USA and NZ, some former Adventists living there became members
of the Auckland church. (The church was formally constituted after a time in
abeyance on 6 Nov 1983). About the same time, another church was formed in the
Blue Mountains area west of Sydney, NSW at Warrimoo by a Seventh Day Baptist
immigrant from the Netherlands, and her Polish husband. (This church was not
accepted into the Conference until 1990.)
A Spanish speaking church was formed in Melbourne in 1978 by people with
Argentinian backgrounds. During the 1980s, a number of fellowships and
churches were formed: Morisset, NSW, 1980;Regents Park, Sydney 1983; Adelaide,
1984; Brisbane, 1984; Melbourne
(English language work) 1985-87; Whyalla SA, 1984; Canberra, ACT 1984; Clayton,
Vic (Spanish), 1985; Frankston, Vic 1985-9; Baulkham Hills, NSW - briefly during
1985; Taree, Bega and Grafton, NSW 1986. Some of this activity was connected
with reform movements in the Seventh Day Adventist church at the time.
A
Conference of the Australian and New Zealand churches was established in 1980.
Even though it had encountered some difficulties through loss of officers and
members, by 1988 it reported 134 members in 6 churches and 1 fellowship. It
held biennial meetings and its official journal, Link, was published
from 1981.
In
a major development towards denominationalization, an Australian (Association)
Fellowship of Churches was created at Easter 1985 to allow more fellowship
without the need for international travel. However, there were differences of
ecclesiology between the Australasian Conference and the Australian Fellowship,
the latter tending to represent people with a Seventh Day Adventist background
which was creedal and centrally organized; the others emphasised the
traditional Baptist views on local autonomy and freedom of conscience.
According to David Hill, ‘The Australian Fellowship “faction” generally
represented a perspective of those who began as Sabbath keepers and afterward
embraced evangelical theology and Baptist polity. The Conference “faction” was
largely operated and “staffed” by evangelicals who had embraced the practice
and theology of Sabbath-keeping.’
These
differences were serious enough to cause some organizational division leading
to some Australian churches withdrawing their membership from the Australasian
Conference in 1985. These included Regents Park Church, the Adelaide Fellowship
and the Bundaberg Church. The Regents Park Church dissolved itself in 1987 when
no resolution to the organizational differences was forthcoming. This
development was a turning point in the denomination, with churches dropping in
number from 13 to 5 in a year. Some consolidation began to take place in the
years that followed, especially with the adoption of an Australasian Statement
of Belief in 1988.
Since
then other churches have been formed at Beenleigh south of Brisbane (1989), Brisbane
Northside fellowship (1990) which later incorporated members from the Morisset
church, and North Parramatta, NSW (1996). A new Australian Association of
Seventh Day Baptists was formed as a result of meetings held in Brisbane on
April 15, 1990. For a time it had its own theological journal, Christian
Credo, but it soon became an independent publication. This Association has
taken a particular interest in the work in Argentina, and it was officially
accepted by the Australasian Conference in 1996.
Official
BWA figures for the Conference are 6 churches with 120 members.
Logo:
Australasian Seventh Day Baptists use the same logo as the American body, but
they because they do not like to use the cross on their churches or on their
logo.
References:
Seventh Day Baptists 1975 - 1985: A Decade in Australia (2nd ed. Unpublished: 1986.Written and published by M. L. Rudd, Honey Haven, M.S. 827, Bundaberg, Q. 4670 071-798270 (in text version at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sdbbris)
Dictionary of Christianity in America (1990)
Robert G. Torbet, A
History of the Baptists (1965)
A.C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists (1947)
Don A. Sanford, A
Choosing People: The History of the Seventh Day Baptists (1992)
A.N. Rogers, Seventh Day
Baptists in Europe and America (1972)
David
Hill, The
Development of the Seventh Day Baptist Denomination in Australia (1999, unpublished paper) (http://www.ozemail.com.au/~davhill)
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