Basic Information

The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 by Baptist congregations in the American South who rejected the anti-slavery tendencies in the Northern Baptist Convention, and withdrew to carry forward independently.

History

	Southern Baptist Convention (1845)	continuedSouthern Baptist Convention
		split into American Baptist Association

Snapshot

	1990	2000	Growth/Decline
Congregations	37,922	41,514	+3,592 (9.5%)
Adherents	18,940,682	19,881,467	+940,785 (5.0%)

Notes

Snapshot data are from Churches and Church Membership in the United States 1990 and Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Copyright © 2002, Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). All rights reserved. Published by Glenmary Research Center, 1312 Fifth Ave., North, Nashville, TN 37208. www.glenmary.org/grc.

History data were taken from the National Council of Churches' Historic Archive CD and recent editions of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches [More information on history data sources]