American Religion Timelines
Baptist Events and People - Events by Date
| Date (Year-Month-Day) | Event | Introduction | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1636-06-01 | Roger Williams Founds Providence, Rhode Island | In 1636, Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, which became known for its religious tolerance and deregulation of religious behavior. | |
| 1640-08-27 | Henry Dunster Becomes President of Harvard | In 1640, Henry Dunster became the first President of Harvard College and helped lay the foundational structure for America’s most renowned institution for higher learning. | |
| 1663-07-08 | Rhode Island Royal Charter | In 1663, the Rhode Island Royal Charter made a unified government in the colony possible, acknowledged American Indian land rights, and declared religious toleration. | |
| 1707-07-01 | Philadelphia Baptist Association | In 1707, Welsh Baptist immigrants in Philadelphia formed the first permanent Baptist denomination in America. | |
| 1727-01-01 | Free Will Baptists Founded in North Carolina | In 1727, Paul Palmer founded North Carolina’s first Baptist Church. This led to the spread of Baptist churches throughout the state. | |
| 1733-01-01 | The First Great Awakening | The First Great Awakening (1730s-1770s) was a series of religious revivals that propelled the expansion of evangelical denominations in the colonies. | |
| 1742-01-01 | Philadelphia Confession of Faith | The Philadelphia Baptist Association adopted the Philadelphia Confession of Faith in 1742, unifying Particular Baptist churches throughout the country. | |
| 1764-03-03 | Brown University | In 1764, the Philadelphia Baptist Association commissioned James Manning to found Brown as a Baptist college. | |
| 1770-01-01 | The Trial of Margaret Meuse Clay | In 1770, local authorities trialed Margaret Meuse Clay for challenging the gender norms of colonial society and for preaching without a license. | |
| 1773-01-01 | Publication of An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty | In 1773, Isaac Backus published a collection of sermons promoting religious liberty and the separation between church and state. | |
| 1775-01-01 | Silver Bluff Baptist Church | Silver Bluff Baptist Church was founded over the course of 1773-1775 as the first black Baptist church in America. | |
| 1780-06-30 | Benjamin Randall Organizes the Free Will Baptists | Itinerant preacher Benjamin Randall organized the Free Will Baptists in New England in 1780. | |
| 1786-01-16 | Virginia's Religious Disestablishment | In 1786, the Virginia legislature passed a bill by Thomas Jefferson ending the Anglican Church's formal establishment as the state religion. | |
| 1790-01-01 | The Second Great Awakening | The Second Great Awakening(s) (1790s-1840s) fueled the rise of an evangelical Protestant majority in antebellum America, giving rise to new denominations and social reform organizations. | |
| 1802-01-01 | Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists | In 1802, Thomas Jefferson's letter contained the phrase "a wall of separation between Church and State," important in later legal interpretations of the first amendment. | |
| 1814-05-18 | Triennial Convention | In 1814, the Triennial Convention became the first formal Baptist missionary agency in America. | |
| 1827-01-01 | The Primitive Baptists Coalesce | In 1827, the Primitive Baptists began forming in response to growing Baptist denominationalism. | |
| 1831-08-21 | Nat Turner's Rebellion | Nat Turner’s rebellion (1831) is the most famous slave revolt in American history. | |
| 1845-05-08 | Southern Baptist Convention Founded | The Southern Baptist Convention (1845) resulted from a split between Northern and Southern Baptists over slavery. It is now the largest Protestant denomination in America. | |
| 1846-07-01 | Ordination of Ruby Knapp Bixby by the Free Will Baptists | In 1846, the Freewill Baptists ordained Ruby Knapp Bixby, making her the first licensed female Baptist preacher. | |
| 1851-06-24 | Initiation of the Baptist Landmarker Movement | In 1851, the Baptist Landmarker movement began and embroiled the Southern Baptist Convention in controversy. | |
| 1873-07-07 | Lottie Moon Sent to China as a Southern Baptist Missionary | In 1873, Lottie Moon went to China as a Southern Baptist missionary at a time when sending unmarried women to the mission field was rare. | |
| 1890-01-01 | University of Chicago | In 1890, John D. Rockefeller and William Rainey Harper founded a non-sectarian university in Chicago to promote progressive education and modernist theology. | |
| 1895-09-24 | National Baptist Convention | The National Baptist Convention has been the largest national association of African-American Baptists since 1895 despite major denominational splits in 1915 and 1961. | |
| 1907-05-17 | Northern Baptist Convention | The Northern Baptist Convention formed in 1907 and represents the theologically liberal and politically progressive strains of the Baptist tradition. | |
| 1923-01-01 | Baptist Bible Union | The Baptist Bible Union was a fundamentalist association of churches which had separated from the Northern Baptist Convention in 1923. | |
| 1924-01-01 | Publication of Shailer Mathews's The Faith of Modernism | Shailer Mathews's The Faith of Modernism (1924) was an influential systematic theology of theological liberalism. | |
| 1925-01-01 | The Cooperative Program Instituted in the Southern Baptist Convention | In 1925, the Southern Baptist Convention's Cooperative Program centralized budgetary authority and aided the growth of the denomination. | |
| 1935-11-05 | National Association of Free Will Baptists | In 1935, the two major "branches" of Free Will Baptists joined together to form the National Association of Free Will Baptists. | |
| 1939-01-01 | Signing of the American Baptist Bill of Rights | The American Baptist Bill of Rights (1939) defended the separation of church and state, paving the way for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. | |
| 1947-05-17 | Conservative Baptist Association of America | William Bell Riley, fundamentalist minister and Bible college president, led the Minnesota Baptist Convention out of the Northern Baptist Convention in 1947. | |
| 1949-09-25 | Billy Graham's Los Angeles Crusade | Billy Graham's Los Angeles Crusade (1949) catapulted the southern evangelist into the national spotlight for the first time. | |
| 1950-01-01 | Baptist Missionary Association of America | The Baptist Missionary Association of America, which split from the American Baptist Association in 1950, is the largest Landmark Baptist denomination in the United States. | |
| 1950-01-01 | Bible Baptist Fellowship | The Bible Baptist Fellowship formed after a split with J. Frank Norris in 1950 and became the largest association of independent Baptists in America. | |
| 1953-03-15 | Billy Graham Holds First Integrated Crusade in Chattanooga, TN | In 1953, Billy Graham's decision to hold an integrated crusade in the South helped shift racial attitudes among white evangelicals. | |
| 1957-02-15 | Southern Christian Leadership Conference | Founded in 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) believed that racial equality was a Christian imperative and utilized non-violent protests to combat racism. | |
| 1957-05-15 | Billy Graham's New York Crusade | In 1957, Billy Graham's New York Crusade became his largest American revival campaign with more than two million attendees. | |
| 1961-01-01 | Pat Robertson Founds Christian Broadcasting Network | In 1961, Pat Robertson founded the Christian Broadcast Network, which became a multi-million dollar outlet for Christian television. | |
| 1961-11-14 | Progressive National Baptist Convention | In 1961, the Progressive National Baptist Convention split from the National Baptist Convention, USA, due to disputes regarding Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights activism. | |
| 1962-10-25 | Ralph Elliott Fired in the "Genesis" Controversy | When Southern Baptist seminary professor Ralph Elliott challenged the historicity of Genesis, conservatives forced him to resign (1962), foreshadowing the conservative resurgence in the SBC. | |
| 1963-09-15 | Birmingham Church Bombing | On September 15, 1963, a bomb detonated inside 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama. Four young African-American girls were killed, sparking national outrage. | |
| 1964-08-09 | First Ordained Southern Baptist Woman, Addie Davis | In 1964, Addie Davis became the first woman ordained in a Southern Baptist church. | |
| 1971-08-01 | Liberty University | Jerry Falwell founded the small Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971, which would grow into the largest private, nonprofit university in America by the 2010s. | |
| 1976-11-02 | Election of Jimmy Carter | In 1976, Jimmy Carter was the first self-proclaimed "born again" Christian elected president of the United States. | |
| 1979-04-12 | Adrian Rogers Elected as President of the Southern Baptist Convention | In 1979, Baptist conservatives elected Adrian Rogers as president of the Southern Baptist Convention as the first part of a takeover strategy. | |
| 1979-06-01 | Jerry Falwell Helps Found the Moral Majority | With the help of Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell in 1979, the founding of the Moral Majority would later influence Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. | |
| 1987-02-12 | Formation of the Alliance of Baptists | Liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention, frustrated by the conservative takeover of the denomination, formed a progressive association of churches in 1987. | |
| 1991-05-09 | Cooperative Baptist Fellowship | Moderate Southern Baptists formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991 to protest the conservative dominance in the denomination during the prior decade. | |
| 1995-01-01 | Tim LaHaye publishes Left Behind | Starting in 1995, the Left Behind series of novels about the Rapture would become the best-selling works of American Christian fiction. |
