“To name is, of course, to denominate.”1

Labeling was a blurry business in the seventeenth century, and it becomes no easier for historians who are centuries removed.2 Some labels more or less accurately describe people or movements; still others clumsily lump one group into another.3 And yet labels are sticky—once they are conventionally adopted, they become tough to shake, even if they unhelpfully “imply the coherence or even existence of a particular group when that may not be obvious.”4 For centuries, many of these labels were assumed as unquestioned truisms until the twentieth-century Marxist historian Christopher Hill bumped a series of dominos in the wider re-analysis of labels and identities.5 Following in his footsteps, historians have since debated, among others, the usage and application of “Puritan,”6 “Dissenter,”7 “Radical,”8 “Anglican,”9 “Ranter,”10 “Protestant,”11 as well as later and contemporary labels.12 Hill argued that assigning labels to seventeenth-century subjects is anachronistically irresponsible because there were not yet clearly defined denominations or borders.13 Similarly, Claire Cross warned that using these labels can only be helpful if implemented to study “pre-history.”14 Yet others maintain that while historians must indeed be careful to avoid an anachronistic and pre-determined Whiggish teleology, traditional labels can still be helpful—if nothing else because there are no available “baggageless alternative(s)”—and their complete abandonment is unnecessary.15

While several of these wider labels and identities received considerable attention in the decades surrounding the turn of the twenty-first century, surprisingly “Baptist” has largely managed to slip through the same level of scrutiny. In 2012, perhaps with “Baptist” in mind, Peter Marshall lamented that the type of analysis given to “Protestantism” or “Puritanism” has “not been extended very much to any of the other denominated identities of English religion in the Reformation period.”16 His observation was not to imply that there has been no shortage of denominational histories, or that labels for specific kinds of Baptists have not been widely used, but that larger denominational labels—like “Baptist” itself—have not been put in the dock, tried, and questioned.

From their very beginning, those in England who had adopted believer’s baptism had an identity and branding problem. “Baptists” of different stripes and origins were ubiquitously accused of Anabaptism which conjured the specter of Jan of Leyden and the continental anarchy of Münster from the previous century.17 These English “Baptists” did not know what to call themselves. In various confessions of faith, they referred to themselves as “baptized churches,” “baptized congregations,” “baptized believers,” and “not Anabaptists.”18 Like many other labels, “Baptist” was first used as an epithet—this one initially aimed at them by Quaker opponents in the 1650s.19 However, Mark Burden has found that, within their extant church books and early records, Calvinistic Baptists did not refer to themselves as “Baptists” until 1691.20 Complicating labeling matters further, there were various kinds of Baptists with different theology, ecclesiology, and genetic histories: the so-called “General Baptists” named for their broadly Arminian theology of general or unlimited atonement; the so-called “Particular Baptists” named for their Calvinistic theology of particular or limited atonement; and the smaller and minority “Seventh-Day Baptists” who observed the Sabbath on Saturday.21

Despite the differences of these various kinds of Baptists, denominational historians have tended to lump the General and Particular Baptists into a larger Baptist identity or a unified “Baptist story.”22 As early as 1738, Thomas Crosby defended the nascent Baptist denomination of his day by moving comfortably about between seventeenth-century General and Particular characters, congregations, and origins.23 Similarly, Joseph Ivimey, in 1811, bounced all over the baptistic landscape, lamenting the division that resulted from quibbling over, in his estimation, Calvinistic theology.24 Crosby, Ivimey, and Thomas Armitage all connected the General and Particular Baptist genetic origins through prior centuries by highlighting John the Baptist, the Patristic Era, medieval England, Lollardy, and Wycliffe and Tyndale, implying that differences amongst Baptists—historical or contemporary—were distinct, yet ultimately minor. That is, General and Particular Baptists were shown to be cousins sharing the essential family resemblance of believer’s baptism.25

With a few scattered exceptions, this lumping trend continued into the twenty-first century. But in 2019, Matthew Bingham presented a provocative contribution to Baptist historiography in his Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution.26 He opposes the lumping tendencies of historians like Stephen Wright, who argued that pre-Civil Wars General and Particular Baptists belong together under a unified, baptistic movement of Separatism. Even further, Bingham suggests that labeling any person of the pre-Restoration era as a “Baptist” is obfuscating and inherently anachronistic.27 While, indeed, Calvinistic “Baptists” did not have a self-referential label, Bingham presents, in his judgment, a more clearly descriptive neologism: they were “baptistic congregationalists.” This novel label seemingly solves two problems: (1) it locates these “baptistic congregationalists” within upper-case C, orthodox Congregationalism,28 that is, they were radicals, but they were orthodox radicals, well situated within Reformed categories of original sin, election, and covenant, thus splitting them away from other heterodox baptistic sects, like the so-called General Baptists, among whom they were (and are) often categorized; and 2) by relegating “baptistic” to a mere adjective of their larger identity—they were Congregationalists—Bingham dismantles the notion of an early “pan-Baptist denomination,” even if a later denomination would eventually and actually evolve.29 At last, the taxonomy and labeling of the wider category of “Baptists” is receiving the kind of scrutiny Marshall asked for in 2012, and Bingham does so by persuasively attacking the status quo on multiple fronts.

Following a brief summary of the book, this article will evaluate Bingham’s overall methodology and conclusions while offering a way forward of appreciative compromise.

1. Summary of Orthodox Radicals

In chapter 1, Bingham shows that so-called Particular and General Baptists were not theological cousins who found agreement on the essential issue (baptism) but then unfortunately disagreed on secondary theological accidents. Rather, they were distinct groups who were fundamentally opposed to one another. Among many other incendiary hostilities, Bingham quotes a 1654 letter from a Particular Baptist congregation at Hexham, saying that while that church would continue to maintain communion with other “‘godly preachers and congregations’ who were ‘unbaptized’ and yet true ‘ministers and churches of Christ’, they would not intermingle with ‘those tainted with that Arminian poison that hath so sadly infected other baptized churches.’”30 In addition to many other references against Arminian Baptists, Bingham shows that these General Baptists were reciprocally inimical toward the Calvinists. He summarizes that, “Calvinist teaching on election and the atonement was declared to be ‘a wrong faith’ and ‘another Gospel’—in other words, a theological breach which no amount of baptismal concord could ever hope to repair.”31 Theological differences, which would later be assumed as subtle and secondary, were actually stark and primary, thus preventing any sense of a unified baptistic identity.

Instead, in chapter 2, Bingham highlights the close friendship, cooperation, and unity between early “baptistic congregationalists” and their Congregationalist brethren from whom they were evolving. When Hanserd Knollys and other members of the semi-Separatist Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey (JLJ) church32 adopted believer’s baptism, Congregationalist mediators did not recommend discipline or reproof, but rather “to count them still of our Church; & pray, & love them.”33 Praisegod Barbon, a JLJ Congregationalist who would later form his own paedobaptistic church, distinguished between those called “Anabaptists … some of which are my loving friends” and those who were not. Though he passionately disagreed with his friends’ theology of baptism, he held that it was a disagreement of “outward religion.” That is, because they found agreement on the primary and fundamental theological issues, Barbon was reticent to disrupt their Christian unity over baptism.34 Bingham then recreates the clandestine events surrounding the publishing of the first London Baptist Confession of 1644, arguing that the Congregationalist Dissenting Brethren possibly leaked information from inside the Westminster Assembly to their baptistic allies.35 This surreptitious cooperation helps to explain the similarities in the 1644 baptistic confession and the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, suggesting that there was no difference between these “Baptists” and Congregationalists, “but rather a difference between congregationalists of different kinds, congregationalists with different understandings of baptism.”36 If there was a pan-anything denomination of cooperation and identity, Bingham might argue, it was pan-Congregationalist.

Chapter 3 then helpfully asks and answers, Why did baptistic congregationalists abandon paedobaptism in the first place? Bingham argues that the Congregationalist emphasis of “visible saints” forced an inevitable tension within their theology which required one to either reject the ecclesiology of regenerate church membership or, instead, reject paedobaptism altogether as the initiating rite into the covenant community. So, in turn, Bingham argues, those who adopted believer’s baptism were merely taking the Congregationalist polity to its logical outcome.37 This helpfully explains why so many Congregationalists adopted baptistic convictions while comparatively few Presbyterians made the same progression.

In chapter 4, Bingham argues that while Oliver Cromwell granted some level of toleration—and even affirmation—to Particular Baptists in the Interregnum years, he did not afford the same level of liberty or affirmation to any General Baptists. The distinction made by the Cromwellian Church shows that “‘Baptists’ as a group were not tolerated, because ‘Baptists’ as a coherent group did not exist during the mid-seventeenth century.”38 So, as Bingham would argue, to haphazardly attach the label of “Baptist” in this era to any person who embraced believer’s baptism in rejection of paedobaptism is to anachronistically lump two disparate groups into one.

Finally, in chapter 5, Bingham explores the formation of early associations and the debate surrounding “open vs. closed” communion amongst these newly formed baptistic congregations.39 In response to historians who use the debate to demonstrate dividing denominational lines, Bingham believes the attention given to the debate is overblown for three reasons. (1) The controversy over communion was one of many increasingly divergent convictions amongst these baptistic congregationalists. (2) It ignores the way in which the controversy developed and hardened over time. (3) It ignores those “closed communion” individuals and churches who still worked closely with “open communion” congregations, some even with the established, national church.40 Individuals and congregations of both sacramental convictions were pursuing the wider-Protestant and Puritan goal of “primitive worship” and a “primitive church,” i.e., the worship and ecclesiology of the Apostles dictated by Scripture. Baptistic congregationalists were merely scraping off “one more ‘popish’ barnacle that had inappropriately attached itself to the ark of Christ’s church.”41 The communion debate should then be understood alongside the adoption of believer’s baptism—that is, their labeled identity did not fundamentally change with either progression. After all, when other Puritans scraped off other “‘anti-Christian’ accretions … we do not assume that each new divestment would have immediately created a corresponding new denominational identity.”42 In other words, those who adopted believer’s baptism did not evolve into a new kind—into Baptists, nor certainly did they become—as like-minded cousins of the General Baptists—Particular Baptists. Instead, they merely progressed further along the spectrum of Congregationalism in degree—they were baptistic congregationalists.

Orthodox Radicals has severely damaged, if not mortally wounded, previous lumping historiographies of early Baptists. While many kinds of anti-paedobaptists were breathing much of the same Separatist air, Bingham shows a genetic, theological, and cultural gulf far too wide between Particular and General Baptists dissuading future historians from considering an overarching Baptist unity. Yet questions remain. Should historians now use “baptistic congregationalists” as the standard replacement nomenclature for Particular Baptists of the mid-seventeenth century? That is, while Bingham has rightly split General from Particular Baptists, is he justified by lumping Particular Baptists together with Congregationalists? By emphasizing the location of these so-called baptistic congregationalists within the orthodox Puritan church, is it possible that—despite the title of his book—Bingham has underemphasized just how radical they actually were? The remainder of this article will argue that believer’s baptism necessitated a change in kind from Congregationalism, not merely degree.

2. They Were Orthodox Radicals

Bingham is correct to highlight the orthodoxy of most of the early Particular Baptists in addition to the close personal connections that several of them enjoyed with esteemed Congregationalists. Indeed, it was the baptistic William Kiffen who coined the phrase, the “Congregationall Way.”43 There was certainly cross-pollination among Congregationalists and Particular Baptists, but Bingham underemphasizes the decisive baptistic break away from Congregationalism by not accounting for the following five observations:

First, the same level of labeling scrutiny given to “Baptists” must be equally applied to “Congregationalists” themselves. While many Congregationalists did struggle with the tension between baptism and the visible church, Bingham’s readers are led to assume that “Congregationalism” was a fully-formed theological system out of which then “baptistic congregationalists” took one further step.44 And yet, the language of the Savoy Declaration of 1658 may not necessarily describe the evolving beliefs of Congregationalists in the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s. In fact, Geoffrey Nuttall, writes that “‘[t]he Congregational men’ [and] ‘the Congregational way’, do not begin to appear until the 1640s” (emphasis added) having finally coalesced out of a Brownist pre-history.45 Great care must be taken not to assume that it was merely those arriving at baptistic convictions who were settling into theological landing zones. In reality, many disparate groups were settling their convictions during this era, including Congregationalists themselves.

Second, while Bingham rightly highlights the unity and affection between many Congregationalists and their baptistic friends—which indeed stands in stark contrast to the antipathy between Particular and General Baptists—he avoids other instances of frustration and antagonism across the purported baptistic lines of “congregationalism.” It was not only Presbyterian heresiographers who denounced those who had adopted believer’s baptism. The Wapping Congregationalist William Bartlet summarily wrote against “those wayes and practises which do vary from what is laid down as the truth,” including the ways and practices of Presbyterians, Erastians, and notably, against those who practice “the way of re-baptizing.” In one fell-swoop, Bartlet excludes “re-baptizers” from a true ecclesiology, placing those of baptistic conviction outside the norms of Congregationalism.46

Likewise, while Praisegod Barbon might have understood baptism to be a non-essential and secondary issue of “outward religion” (perhaps especially amongst his close JLJ church friends with whom he once shared communion), the Congregationalist Samuel Chidley did not come to the same charitable conclusion. Chidley believed baptism to be one of the primary or “Fundamental points of Religion,” and he opposed the baptistic John Spilsbury where he had “swerveth from the rule of righteousness,” that is, baptism.47 Like Bartlet, Chidley is outside of the commonly accepted mainstream of Congregationalism represented by the likes of the Dissenting Brethren, and therefore may lose representative weight. But perhaps moving concentrically out from the JLJ network is actually helpful to clarify real theological difference when not held by those who were close and trusting friends.48

And yet the antipathy did not just spew from Congregationalists—it was often reciprocal. One can make the caveat that John Spilsbury had only the national church in mind when he wrote against paedobaptism, but no amount of caveats will remove the rhetorical punch from statements like, “So I say, give to Antichrist his baptizing of infants, and to Christ His baptizing of believers.”49 Likewise the baptistic Andrew Ritor wrote against “the Separated,” by which he means Congregationalists. After making many standard arguments against paedobaptism, Ritor indignantly concluded, “Therefore the administration of Baptisme upon Infants is Antichristian and abominable … wherefore it is high time for us to looke about us to awake out of this drunken slumber.”50 And in Ireland, Thomas Patient assumed that all paedobaptism was “idolatry and false worship,” and “the Worship of Devils.”51 If Bingham rightly shows division and a lack of commonality amongst General and Particular Baptists from their writings against each other, then we must be willing to do the same with writings which clearly show the contentious nature of the new relationship amongst Congregationalists and Particular Baptists as well.

Third, while Congregationalists were semi-Separatists—still willing to pay tithes and otherwise cooperate with the national church (even if begrudgingly)—Particular Baptists were, for the most part, strict Separatists.52 Bingham’s chapter on the Cromwellian inclusion of Calvinistic Baptists indeed shows some level of social and theological acceptance, but while they maintained civic loyalty, Particular Baptists rejected any ecclesial link with the State, thus diverging from their semi-Separatist Congregationalist brethren. Most Congregationalists had goals for national comprehension as well as the overall reunification of orthodox puritans, but B. R. White has persuasively shown that the 1644 London Confession not only departed from the 1596 True Confession for its stance on baptism but also in Church-State relations as well.53

Fourth, it is imperative to understand baptism in its social context as a public rite of passage. Arnold Van Gennep has separated various rituals into three categories: pre-liminary rites of separation, liminary rites of transition, and postliminary rites of communal incorporation.54 Van Gennep applied these three categories primarily to rituals pertaining to birth, marriage, and death, but a person of baptistic persuasion in the seventeenth century would likely recognize believer’s baptism comprehensively accomplishing all three. Émile Durkheim argued that we cannot understand religious beliefs until we observe the “defined collectivity that professes them and practices the rites that go with them.”55 And so Gordon Smith is surely right to describe believer’s baptism as “a moral act with moral consequences”—that is, it is a liminal transition out of one community and into another.56 While, indeed, as will be later conceded, some Calvinistic Baptists remained in comfortable communion with Congregationalists, for most, believer’s baptism became the social waters of the Rubicon—once gone under and then crossed, there was no going back to a Congregationalist communion.

Fifth, and relatedly, most so-called baptistic congregationalists not only separated from the national church, but they also cut off all ecclesial ties with their former Congregationalist brethren as well. While Bingham is right to observe ongoing Christian friendship—especially within the narrow network of the London JLJ church—Joel Halcomb recounts the futile Congregationalist efforts of the mid-1650s in Ireland to regain a public communion with the newly separated baptistic congregations. Even though one Baptistic leader was the irenic Christopher Blackwood, the Congregationalists instead complained about the wider Calvinistic Baptists’ “totall withdrawings from us in publique worship.”57 Likewise, a Congregationalist chaplain for the Cromwellian church reported to John Thurloe that he found the Irish Baptists “every where unanimous and fixt in separateing from us, even to the ordinance of hearing the word.”58

What is more, the development of associations, and the accompanying debate surrounding “open vs. closed” communion, despite Bingham’s argument to the contrary, further proves the point. Because of the interconnectedness of the sacraments—baptism as the door into the life of the church and communion as the ongoingly experienced life of the church—Baptists began to argue that a church should not ongoingly affirm covenantal existence (communion) without first affirming covenantal entrance (believer’s baptism)—to do so would be disordered. And if the pursuit of a “pure church” at a local level was the driving force behind believer’s baptism, communion, and membership, the same desire for purity also informed the bodies with whom congregations would then more widely associate. Hence, the Tetsworth Baptist association concluded, “unless orderly churches be owned orderly, and disorderly churches be orderly disowned,” then the purity of the wider body of Christ’s churches would be impossible to achieve and maintain.59

The first of these “orderly” baptistic associations formed in south Wales in 1650. By 1652, five Welsh churches had formalized cooperation with one another, and all of them were closed communion churches—that is, because believer’s baptism, according to their conviction, must precede access to the communion table, they effectively barred all Congregationalists from church or associational fellowship. Likewise, the Abingdon association formed in 1652 with the recognition that “true churches of Christ ought to acknowledge one another to be such.”60 Bingham rightly recounts, but then minimizes, the closed communion considerations of the Abingdon association for whom the sacramental question was extremely serious—convictional agreement about baptism was required for cooperation.

Similarly, the Ilston church book includes letters signed by London Baptists who warned their Welsh brethren in the early 1650s that infant baptism was “absolutly contrary to the word” and that “the Scripture comaunds …a withdrawinge from euery brother that walks disorderly and not accordinge to the rules of Christ and his Apostles.” To not withdraw ecclesiologically from their Congregationalist acquaintances and friends would be the kind of “indifferency and lukwarmnes in the wayes of Christ the Lord will spue foorth.” 61 The Ilston book likewise recounts the ordeal of the Welsh pastor, Thomas Proud, who, in 1651, was suspended by his own church for leading in open communion—that is, for allowing “unbaptized” Congregationalists to the communion table—by which the congregation declared that their pastor had “grievously sinned against God.”62

Baptism, and its ecclesiological implications, brought decisive breaks. While Bingham portrays William Kiffen as ecumenically adaptable during the 1640s and 1650s, Kiffen had actually arrived at hardened ecclesiological convictions during the era.63 In 1643, visitors from the Broadmead church in Bristol would later record in their church book of their experience with Kiffen’s church, that “only those professors that were baptized before they went up, they did sit down with Mr. Kiffin and his church.”64 Kiffen’s wide and ongoing social friendships, which Bingham righty highlights, did not necessitate an open communion table for his own particular church. That is, the fact that Kiffen was willing to cooperate outside of his church does not indicate a reciprocal level of cooperation toward paedobaptists within his church. This was no two-way street. While Bingham shows that, in 1653, the Council of State gave Kiffen “free use of any pulpits to preach in,” there is not the slightest inclination that Kiffen would have given similar liberty of his pulpit to those not sharing his convictions.65 In Kiffen’s likely thinking, it would not be disordered or problematic for a rightly baptized Christian to preach at a paedobaptist—but otherwise orthodox—church, and we might even assume that Kiffen, and others like him, might view those opportunities as evangelistic openings to further legitimate their cause.

Bingham is right to point out that the communion controversy was just one of many issues causing division amongst the Particular Baptists. It is unnecessary, Bingham would argue, to further taxonomize them into splintering denominational species of those who, for instance, did or did not insist on the laying on of hands or those for or against congregational hymn-singing.66 On the one hand, baptism was indeed one of many other controversies of the day. But on the other, baptism (and its implications on ecclesiology, communion, and association) was in a class of its own. These other lesser controversies undoubtedly caused no small level of dissension and even division, but it was for their view on baptism that Bingham rightly calls them “radicals.” It can be tempting to understand mid-seventeenth century baptistic developments in merely Crossian categories of “pre-history,” and presumably, historians could say that Thomas Proud pastored a Welsh “baptistic congregationalist” church at Ilston.67 But if that church censured their own pastor for allowing Congregationalists to come to the communion table, then surely they cannot be called Congregationalists—even with the “baptistic” qualifying adjective. Believer’s baptism had drawn real and observable dividing lines. Of course, the Particular Baptists of the 1640s brought much of their Congregationalist DNA along with them to their newly formed Baptist churches, but, as James Renihan argues, the Baptists now had a “self-conscious identity distinct from the Independents.”68 Similarly, in his explorations of their actual church books, Joel Halcomb concludes that “the distinctions and debates between Congregationalists and Baptists are not evidence for denominational ‘pre-history’,” but instead reveal two “set, rival ecclesiastical programmes resulting in separate church movements.”69 In other words, the baptistic evolution did not result in a change in theological degree but in kind—not a move to the far-left, baptistic end of the Congregationalist spectrum, but a leaving behind of the spectrum altogether.

3. A Concluding Way Forward

“Congregational” is a wonderfully helpful adjective to describe a polity, but it becomes a poor identity marker when removed from uppercase C- Congregationalism. This is exactly what Kiffen did with his phrase “the Congregationall way.” The Congregational Way describes the doctrine of a local, gathered, and visible church—true, Baptists imbibed this polity, but the majority then rejected Congregationalism because it remained invisible by its baptism of infants. While they would not stomach a shared identity with just any anti-paedobaptist, becoming a baptized believer was fundamental to who they were and how they associated. “Baptist,” therefore, belongs not merely as a descriptive adjective but as an identifying noun to communicate their significant break from paedobaptist theological and social norms. Historians must certainly heed John Coffey’s warning to “keep their wits about them” in understanding that religious identities were often hybrid and evolving, but so long as careful distinction is made between the traditional labels of “Particular Baptist” and “General Baptist,” there is no compelling reason to abandon them.70

But of course, while many of these baptistic men and women of the mid-seventeenth century decisively moved from one theological kind to another, not all made the same break. Bingham is right to identify the murky categorization of John and Lucy Hutchinson, Henry Jessey, Thomas Hardcastle, John Tombes, Vavasor Powell, and John Bunyan, who all embraced an open communion table alongside those who had not equally received the light of their baptistic convictions. In support, Halcomb notes that “in the 1650s many congregations could be described equally as Congregationalist or Baptist,” practicing what Hill describes as “intercommunion.”71 If these individuals and churches were not Particular Baptists—those who decisively broke from Congregationalism, leaving the Congregationalist spectrum altogether behind—what should we call them?

In 1972, B. R. White suggested that there were not two kinds of English Baptists in the mid-seventeenth century, but three: 1) General Baptists; 2) “closed” membership Particular Baptists; and 3) “open” membership Particular Baptists.72 White helpfully separated the second and third categories because of their inability to agree on sacramental dividing lines. Now five decades after White’s suggested three categories, if anything, Bingham has perhaps supplied an interchangeable label for White’s third category: 1) General Baptists, 2) Particular Baptists, and 3) baptistic congregationalists.

Bingham’s hybrid neologism does justice to someone like John Bunyan, who Anne Dunan-Page calls a “‘middle way’ Christian.”73 Similarly, the ecumenical Henry Jessey becomes an ideal mascot for baptistic congregationalists, while others like Kiffen, Spilsbury, Hanserd Knollys, Benjamin Coxe, and other traditionally identified Particular Baptists would not so easily fit on the cover of Bingham’s book.

Agreeing on seventeenth-century labels has always been a moving target because convictions were evolving, religious definitions were tenuous, and identity borders were porous.74 Yet Joel Halcomb has warned that “to name is, of course, to denominate.”75 And so, if a growing number of pastors and their churches were moving in a deliberate baptistic exodus away from Congregationalism, historians should be reticent to drag them back to the identity which they had so decisively left behind.