New Connexion of General Baptists
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The New Connexion of General Baptists was formerly a Great Awakening revivalist offshoot of the General Assembly of General Baptists, the national ecclesiastical organization of General Baptists in Great Britain, one of the two main strands of the Baptist tradition. The New Connexion is now merged with the Baptist Union of Great Britain.
History
[edit]The New Connexion of General Baptists was established in 1770, in Leicestershire. Whilst the organization owes its foundation to Daniel Taylor, it can be traced to General Baptist churches in the east Midlands, out of communion with the General Assembly of General Baptists, and loosely associated since the 1750s.
The main association was the Barton Society, which was centered in the village of Barton-in-the-Beans, near Market Bosworth and included churches in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
Dan Taylor unified the Barton Society and all the other General Baptist churches disenchanted with the General Assembly drift towards heterodox beliefs into one revivalist organization. The Great Awakening had exacerbated the orthodox Baptist churches’ frustration. In contrast to their heterodox counterparts, their “strong evangelistic zeal and strong corporate feeling” was “obviously a child of the Methodist Revival”.[1]
The New Connexion of General Baptists was well organized from the outset and developed well in the emerging urban areas of the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the industrial Midlands. By 1817, the year after Taylor's death, the New Connexion had around 70 chapels.
Development
[edit]By 1798, the New Connexion of General Baptists had founded its own academy to educate ministers and lay preachers, mainly for ordination. Initially, the academy was located in Mile End, the east end of London, before moving to Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, in 1813. The New Connexion's academy re-located again in 1855 (to Leicester) and in 1882, as the ‘Midland Baptist College’, to Nottingham. It closed around the time of the First World War and its assets were transferred to Rawdon Baptist College (The Northern Baptist College).
The Baptist Union of Great Britain, formed in 1812, did not include General Baptists. However, “in order to allow more churches to join, it had reduced its doctrinal basis to the bare minimum in 1832, simply asking for agreement in the sentiments usually denoted as evangelical. This had resulted in a number of churches from the New Connexion joining”.[2]
After the Down Grade Controversy, which resulted in the defeat of those Calvinistic theological conservatives like Charles Spurgeon, skepticals of the value of modern biblical criticism, the path was open to greater unification. John Clifford, baptized in a church of the New Connexion and ordained after studying at the New Connexion's Midland Baptist College, became the President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain in 1888. Under his leadership, the New Connexion completely merged with the Baptist Union in 1891. No confession of faith was required from either side, Calvinist or Arminian. John Clifford also became the first President of the Baptist World Alliance, from 1905 to 1911.