Basic Beliefs
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 Saviour 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 trusthworthy.
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 Godm 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 privelegs
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
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
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...
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.