Why the Name ‘United Baptist’?

Our congregation goes back to 1638 when the original settlers came to Rhode Island (Aquidneck Island). In 1656 a group left the church over theological disagreements and formed the Second Baptist Church.

Sadly, church splits are not uncommon. What is uncommon is for those splits to be healed and that is the story behind our name.

During World War 2, First and Second Baptist began temporarily worshipping together so that the US military could make use of one of their two buildings.

After the war, the two churches then entered into discussion about making the reunion permanent. And in 1946, 290 years after they had parted ways, First and Second Baptist reunited as one congregation under the name ‘United Baptist Church.’

History of UBC

The originals settlers of Rhode Island and founders of our Church had been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony due to controversy with the state church established there.

John Clarke who had recently arrived from England accompanied the group of exiles and became the first pastor of this church.

John Clarke and Baptist Distinctives

During a Pastoral visit to an elderly church member then living in Lynn Massachusetts.
John Clarke and two other men from the Church were arrested and charged with several crimes owing to their Baptist beliefs.

During sentencing, Governor John Endicott challenged Clarke to defend his beliefs in a public debate with the ministers of the state Church in Boston.

The next day, Clarke wrote a letter from the Boston jail accepting the challenge and asking to know when, where, and with whom he might publicly defend his views.

When asked about the specific question to be debated, Clarke submitted the 4 following claims that he would defend:

1. 1. That Jesus is Lord, and that none with him are given to command and order the worship of God in the household of faith.
   2. That Baptism is only for visible believers who manifest repentance towards God and faith in Jesus.
   3. That it is the duty of every Christian to continue to grow in godliness and to exercise their God-given gifts for the edification of the Church.
   4. That no servant of Christ has the liberty, much less the authority, to smite his fellow servant or with outward force to constrain or restrain his conscience.

In these four claims we find an early summary of what we now understand to be baptist theological distinctives:

• • • The authority of Christ to bind the conscience of his people by his word.
    • Regenerate Church Membership.
    • Believers Baptism.
    • A vision of Christian discipleship rooted in the fellowship of the local church.
    • The Liberty of Conscience and the free exercise of religion.

Obadiah Holmes: Struck with Roses

Obadiah Holmes was one of the men who was arrested with John Clarke in Lynn Massachusetts.

On Sept 5th, 1651 Holmes was publicly whipped in Boston on account of his religious convictions.
He received 30 lashes, and during the beating he addressed the gathered crowd.

Here is Holmes own account of that day:

“And as the man began to lay the strokes upon my back, I said to the people, though my flesh should fail, and my spirit should fail, yet God would not fail; so it pleased the Lord to come in, and so to fill my heart and tongue as a vessel full, and with an audible voice I brake forth, praying unto the Lord not to lay this sin to their charge, and telling the people, that now I found he did not fail me, and therefore now I should trust him forever who failed me not; for in truth, as the strokes fell upon me, I had such a spiritual manifestation of God’s presence as the like thereunto I never had, nor felt, not can with fleshly tongue express.”

When the beating was over, Holmes said to the presiding Magistrates, “You have struck me as with Roses.”

Obadiah Holmes would later become the second pastor of our church. After the death of John Clarke in 1676.

Roots of Religious Liberty in America

A few months after his release from prison in Massachusetts, John Clarke traveled to England and remained there for 12 years seeking official recognition of Rhode Island as an English Colony.

In 1663, King Charles II signed a charter granting Rhode Island the rights and privileges of an English colony. The Charter, written by Clarke, also established and protected the liberty of conscience in religious matters, making Rhode Island the first civil Government in history to enshrine religious liberty in their founding documents.

Clarke’s Baptist principles of liberty of conscience and the limitation of the state in matters of religion would later come to expression in the founding Documents of the United States.