Baptists

About 50 million Baptists reside in the United States, distributed among several national bodies or conventions and a host of non-aligned independent churches. Traditionally, Baptists affirm the separation of church and state, the priesthood of all believers, local church autonomy, a high view of biblical authority, and believer’s baptism by immersion.

The over 300 Baptist churches located in Greater Indianapolis belong to at least 13 groupings. Some are small: the Indiana Fellowship of Fundamental Baptists; North American Baptist General Conference, Chicago; the Primitive or Free Will Baptists; the Baptist Bible Fellowship; and the General Baptists. The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches has around 16 affiliates in the Indianapolis area. Some churches are unaffiliated or only loosely organized. A prominent independent Baptist congregation in the city is the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, founded in 1950. The Baptist Temple fellowships with the American Coalition of Unregistered Churches, and it operates the Indianapolis Baptist Schools as part of its ministry.

The major limbs of the Baptist family tree, which together comprise around two-thirds of all Marion County Baptist churches, are the American Baptist Churches, USA, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the several Black Baptist organizations.

American Baptist or ABC/USA churches in Indianapolis total 39 with over 11,000 members. The First Baptist Church at 86th Street and College Avenue is the area’s largest ABC church. It also holds the distinction of being the city’s first Baptist church, founded September 21, 1822. Among its 17 charter members were Eliza and John McCormick and John’s brother, Samuel, considered to be among Marion County’s first white settlers. Benjamin Barnes, an itinerant minister, assumed the first pastoral charge. By 1841 the church had over 100 members. In 1864, after a series of residences, the church erected a $35,000 meeting house at Pennsylvania and New York streets; its home for the next 40 years. After the Civil War the church’s local mission efforts stepped up with the founding of the South Street Baptists, Garden Baptist Church, North Baptist, and River Avenue Baptist Church. Through its 200-year history, First Baptist has fashioned or financially nurtured over 16 congregations, including First Karen Baptist Church, the congregational home to some of the city’s Burmese population.

In 1904 the First Baptist church burned. In 1906 the 1,000-plus members paid for a new $200,000, 1,200-seat, edifice, probably the state’s largest, on the northeast corner of Vermont and Meridian streets. In this same year Frederick E. Taylor began his 26-year pastorate. Under his direction, and financed by a well-to-do congregation, the church heavily supported missions, cared for the community’s needy, and expanded its Sunday school. By the late 1920s the church boasted a membership of 1,900. After World War II, as the city and its families pushed far outside the Mile Square, the church, like other downtown churches, grappled with the focus of its mission. Diminishing parking space and the state’s effort to purchase land around the Indiana World War Memorial, persuaded the church to sell its property to the state for over $725,000. In 1960, it moved to a $1.25 million structure at 86th Street and College Avenue. The congregation eventually bought a surrounding 39-acre farm and orchard, on which the church conducted a large athletic program.

First Baptist Church along with the other 32 ABC churches fellowship together in an association called the American Baptist Churches of Greater Indianapolis. Four of these ABC churches come from the ranks of the city’s Black congregations.

For much of the antebellum era (ca. 1820s-1860s), Black communities of Indianapolis worshipped in white churches, usually Baptist or Methodist, and were segregated in a balcony or rear pew, purposely denied active participation in the life of the congregation. In 1846 Rev. Charles Sachell, a former Cincinnati Baptist pastor-turned-missionary, assembled a group of like-believers in the house of John Brown at West and Ohio streets and launched the mother church of the city’s Black Baptists, known as the Second Baptist Church. A brick church went up in 1853 on Missouri Street between New York and Ohio streets.

In 1857 Second Baptist hired preacher and pastor Moses Broyles, an ex-slave who had been educated at Eleutherian College near Madison, Indiana. He came to a congregation of 30 and a four-year-old, unplastered, pewless, and unpainted sanctuary. Broyles steadied the physical plant, increased its size and, as a result of his efforts, a new church was built in 1867. The membership increased to 630 by 1875. Broyles also led in establishing a handful of other Black churches in the area, including White Lick in Bridgeport in 1866, Lick Creek, now Olivet Baptist, in 1867, Mount Zion in 1869, Georgetown Baptist in 1872, New Bethel and Tabernacle in 1875. Broyles was instrumental in the formation in 1858 of an association of Black churches, called the Indiana Baptist Association, which became by 1895 the Indiana Missionary Baptist State Convention. In 1880 Broyles witnessed the formation of the pioneering Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama, which evolved by 1895 into the National Baptist Convention. Broyles died in 1882 but his successors at Second Baptist soon built the church’s membership to 1,900.

In the early years of the 20th century, Indianapolis’ African-American Churches grew rapidly as the migration of Black individuals moving to the northern cities increased. In 1908, 19 of 40 Black congregations in Indianapolis were Baptist, including three Freewill, or “footwash,” Baptists. In 1915 a schism in the National Baptist Convention split churches and created new ones throughout the country. In Indianapolis the upheaval resulted in the founding of two associations of churches. By 1923 there were 36 Black Baptist churches in Indianapolis, a number that doubled by 1947. Meanwhile, Second Baptist, which built an edifice at Michigan and West streets between 1912 and 1920, continued to exert enormous influence in the Black community. However, the post-World War II dispersion of population throughout the county substantially decreased the church’s membership. By the early 1990s, this forced the congregation to relocate to 2300 West Washington Street.

The need for a school to train ministers led Rev. C. J. Dailey, pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church, to spearhead the establishment of the Central Baptist Theological Seminary in the fall of 1943. Another institution is the Edna Martin Christian Center, which began as the Eastside Christian Center in 1945.

Marion County contained 108 Black Baptist churches by 1960, 15 of which belonged to a new national body, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which Martin Luther King, Jr., assisted in establishing. The progressive churches blossomed for a few years in Indianapolis, but few if any affiliates remain in the city.

Dr. James S. Wells, pastor of Zion Hope Baptist Church, founded the Baptist Bible College of Indianapolis in 1980 to provide a four-year program for minority, adult, and low-income students interested in full-time Christian vocations. The school, located at 2305 North Kitley Avenue, was the nation’s only independent fundamentalist Baptist school offering a bona fide four-year Bible education to a primarily Black student body.

In 1988, with the number of Black Baptist churches nearing 160 (not counting storefronts), a split in the National Baptist Convention of America created the National Missionary Baptist Convention, Inc. The Central District Association churches, led by Dr. F. Benjamin Davis, pastor of New Bethel Church, joined the new convention almost as a whole. The Central Association changed its name to the Capitol City Fellowship Association. The old Central District and the old Union District Association remained intact. The three associations met annually in a state convention. The three associations included the great majority of Black Baptist churches, however, at least 40 Black churches remained singly or dually aligned with six other Baptist branches or remained unassociated. Four of these churches were connected with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Southern Baptist Convention was born in the 1840s. Southern Baptist churches broke from their northern brethren over the slavery issue. In 1840, an American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention had brought the slavery issue into the open. The Baptist Foreign Mission Board denied a request by the Alabama Convention that slave owners be eligible to become missionaries. Finally, a Baptist Free Mission Society was formed and refused Southern money. The southern members withdrew and formed the Southern Baptist Convention. The split was completed in 1845.

In 1914 the Southern Baptists established their first church in Indiana in the Sullivan County town of Hymera. The Southern Baptists first move towards Indianapolis came in the form of a series of revivals in a tent at 3210 South Rural Street in July and August of 1953. Encouraged by the turnout, 24 charter members launched a mission Sunday school and services in a rented Youth for Christ building at 2011 North Meridian Street. In March 1954, the new church, named First Southern Baptist, purchased nine lots in the 5500 block of East 38th Street, and, in August, the congregation broke ground for a new sanctuary. Even as the building underwent construction, the congregation began sponsoring the establishment of other area churches. In 1958 the church hosted representatives from throughout Indiana in the establishment of the Convention of Baptists in Indiana, the state organization of Southern Baptist churches.

By the end of its first decade in 1963, the First Southern Baptist church had a membership of 766. That same year, the Northside Baptist Church was founded at 3021 East 71st Street. Over the next two decades, the number of new Southern Baptist churches increased three-fold with a total membership exceeding 6,500. First Southern Baptist and Northside Baptist Church both continued their growth as well. In 1985 First Southern Baptist bought 75 acres in the 8900 block of Fall Creek Road and built a new church home to accommodate its growth. Northside Baptist’s membership grew to 1,600. By the 1990s, Indianapolis-area Southern Baptists, which by this point belonged to the Metropolitan Baptist Association, numbered around 7,500 members in an estimated 70 churches.

*Note: This entry is from the original print edition of the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (1994). We are currently seeking an individual with knowledge of this topic to update this entry.