American Baptist Historical Society

June 8, 1789. Baptists support James Madison’s First Amendment to the constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
ABHS has many books and tracts written by Baptists about the need for freedom of religion in the newly formed United States of America

ABHS celebrates First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church in Newark on their 225th anniversary!

ABHS Congratulates First Baptist Church of Cranford/Elizabeth in Elizabeth on the celebration of their 183rd anniversary!

June 19, 1808. First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, offered “brethren of color” the use of its building. Blacks could be offered membership in a ‘white’ church, but that didn’t mean they would be considered equal.

A researcher at ABHS found a record where a black member of a church was refused permission to bury his child in the church cemetery. ABHS has many of First Church Philadelphia’s original church records.

Handwritten records go back as far as the 1750s. Early Philadelphia church records are now online.

We are honored that the American Baptist Historical Society’s JACS exhibit was highlighted by West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor during her Memorial Day remarks.

Mayor Cantor reflected on her recent visit to our exhibit at the John P. Webster Library at First Church in West Hartford and encouraged community members to experience its powerful stories of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Her recognition underscores the importance of preserving and sharing these stories as our nation reflects on its history and the ongoing pursuit of justice and belonging.

Read the full article here:
https://we-ha.com/250-years-west-hartford-memorial-day-ceremony/

We are grateful to Mayor Cantor for helping bring attention to this important exhibit and the conversations it inspires.

250 Years: West Hartford Memorial Day Ceremony - We-Ha | West Hartford News Following the unfortunate cancellation of the Memorial Day Parade, a large crowd of West Hartford residents still showed up to honor the fallen, during an emotional and inspirational ceremony. West Hartford Memorial Day ceremony. May 25, 2026. Photo credit: Roz Green By Roz Green Although

June 4– In 1768 Five Virginia Baptists were imprisoned by the state for ‘disturbing the peace’. That could be anything from preaching in public to complaining about the lack of religious freedom, or any other number of offenses. Baptists were not free to preach, baptize, or meet together without government sanction.

May 30, 1792. William Carey inspired the first modern mission movement when he preached a sermon on Isiah 54:2-3 (““Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back…”) He also wrote a missionary manifesto in which he called for the formation of a Baptist Missionary Society. Carey himself went to India as a missionary, where Adoniram and Ann Judson came to him for baptism. In 1818, the mission in India founded Serampore College to train indigenous ministers for the growing church and to provide education in the arts and sciences to anyone regardless of caste or country. ABHS has correspondence between Judson and Carey, as well as other correspondence and articles by Carey. There are many books and articles about him, too.

May 25, 1803. The American Baptist magazine was formed by a vote of the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society. Originally named The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, the name was changed to The American Baptist Magazine in 1817 and to The Baptist Missionary Magazine in 1836. In 1910 it combined with the Home Missions Monthly and the name was changed to Missions. The ‘s’ was dropped in 1967, and the magazine merged with Crusader in 1970 to become The AMERICAN BAPTIST magazine. ABHS has all the issues of this line of magazines.

ABHS Congratulates Embrace Church in Evansville on the celebration of their 25th anniversary!

May 24, 1878. Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor, theologian, and peace and justice activist, was born in Buffalo. NY. Graduating from Colgate University in 1900, and Union Theological Seminary in 1903, he was ordained and served churches in New Jersey and New York, including Riverside Church in Manhattan. Fosdick became a central figure in the "Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy" within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th Century. He presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God's will, not as the literal "Word of God". He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change. ABHS has many books and articles about his life, and many more that he authored.