Baptists, Protestant Christians who accept the basic doctrine of the 16th-century Reformation but have added other beliefs and practices, including baptism of believers by immersion only, the separation of Church and state, and the autonomy of the local church. The Baptists are important for their emphasis on these and other beliefs and for their numbers.
The history of the Baptist Church is traced to the early days of the Protestant Reformation-specifically, the division of the Reformation. John Smyth and Thomas Helwys founded the first Baptist church on Dutch soil at Amsterdam in 1609. …
