The Origins of the Particular and Reformed Baptists

The Question

A friend recently asked Jared Smith whether he stood with Sam Renihan and his father on the question of the origins of the Particular and Reformed Baptists. His answer, given with some additions for clarity, is a concise and historically grounded account of how two very different Baptist traditions came to be confused — and why the confusion matters.

The Reformed Baptist Takeover

The Reformed Baptist movement began in England during the 1950s. It did not arise organically from within the historic Particular Baptist churches — it took them over. The churches it commandeered belonged to the Metropolitan Association of Strict Baptist Churches in London, an association founded in 1871 on a doctrinal basis that expressly rejected the very teachings the Reformed Baptists would later impose. The original Articles of Faith of the Association denounced the doctrines of Duty-Faith and the Free Offer of the gospel. Any minister or church departing from that doctrinal basis was to be expelled. The Reformed Baptists exchanged those Articles for the “1966 We Believe” and the 1689 Baptist Confession, renamed the Association, and effectively locked the original Particular Baptists out of their own fellowship.

Smith speaks from direct personal experience. The church he pastored for twenty years — Bethesda Chapel, Kensington — was organized in 1866, and its first pastor was the very man who spearheaded the founding of the Metropolitan Association. That church remained a member of the Association until around 2013, by which time it had returned to its founding principles of high sovereign grace. The Association sent a representative to enquire of their teachings and strongly advised them to resign, as they were the only remaining member church still holding to the original doctrinal basis. The church that founded the Association was the last one standing on its original ground — and was effectively expelled for it.

Particular Baptists and Reformed Baptists Are Not the Same

The confusion between the two traditions is widespread, particularly in the United States, where Reformed Baptists study their own version of Particular Baptist history within the vacuum of the Reformed Baptist movement and according to its prejudices. The result is that the history, doctrine, and heritage of the historic Particular Baptists has been swept away by the prolific writings of men who are not their heirs.

The doctrinal distinction is fundamental. The historic Particular Baptists belonged to what is called the Hyper-Calvinist section of Baptist churches — those who rejected Duty-Faith (the teaching that the natural, unregenerate man has a duty to believe the gospel) and the Free Offer of the gospel (the teaching that God sincerely desires the salvation of all men). The Reformed Baptists, by contrast, subscribe to the teachings of Andrew Fuller and are fierce proponents of both. Had the Reformed Baptists lived in the 19th century, they would have belonged to the Baptist Union — the very body that Spurgeon fought in the Downgrade Controversy — not to the Strict and Particular Baptist associations.

The Importance of the Distinction

This is not merely a historical footnote. The line between the Particular Baptists and the Reformed Baptists is the line between high sovereign grace and a modified Calvinism that, in the tradition of Andrew Fuller, softens the particularity of the gospel in the direction of the free offer. Those who hold to the doctrines of grace in their full and unmodified form — particular election, particular redemption, irresistible grace applied by the Holy Spirit to the elect alone — stand in the tradition of John Gill, the Strict and Particular Baptists, and the original Metropolitan Association. They do not stand in the tradition of the Westminster Confession or the 1689 Baptist Confession as interpreted by the modern Reformed Baptist movement.

Particular Baptists, Smith notes, have never idolised confessions of faith or 17th century religion. Their authority is Scripture alone. Their doctrinal heritage is the free, sovereign, particular grace of God in Christ — a heritage worth knowing, worth defending, and worth distinguishing from those who have claimed it without warrant.