Our Baptist Heritage
Obadiah Holmes: A Baptist at His Best
By Barry W. Jones

Earlier this year our pastor at Milledge Avenue Baptist Church, Edward Bolen asked another church member and me to help him organize a Baptist Heritage Sunday.

My assignment was to find some interesting characters from Baptist history. I came across a book called Baptist Piety. It was written by a 17th Century Baptist, Obadiah Holmes, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island, in the year 1641. I quickly discovered I knew little about this branch of history, and found it fascinating.

Holmes originally came from England and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settling in the village of Rehoboth. Before too long, however, he began having problems in the Bay Colony because of the way he chose to worship and share his faith. He chose doing things contrary to ways approved by the Bay Colony clergy and Colonial authorities. Holmes decided to leave and move his family to the Rhode Island Colony where religious freedom had been granted. He also found other likeminded Baptists living there.

In the process of reading Baptist Piety, I learned a great deal about Holmes. He was, for instance, fiercely independent to the point of contrariness, and he believed strongly in all the characteristics that have come to define and shape the Baptist heritage in America. His life, beliefs and sacrifices also allowed a glimpse of how that heritage was formed.

For instance at our best, we Baptists...

1. ...claim freedom for both ourselves and all people who want to worship in freedom. We may strongly disagree with the Muslims, the Jews, the Catholics or even with many other Baptists, but men like Obadiah Holmes gave us a heritage that challenges us to struggle for the right of all religious groups to worship as they choose. The result is that good Baptists believe in religious freedom.

2. ...claim the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice, and we accept no creed but the Bible. Obadiah Holmes was determined not to accept the authority of clergy and magistrates over his religious life in Colonial America. As traditional Baptists in the 21st Century, we would object to such controls as well.

3. ...place a great deal of freedom (and responsibility) in the hands of individuals, believing that each person in our congregation is free and competent to call on Christ in a personal way and respond to the call of Jesus on his or her life. Obadiah Holmes wanted no intercessor between us and our Lord.

4. ...practice believer’s baptism, and we do not believe that the baptism of an infant automatically makes that child a follower of Jesus Christ. Obadiah Holmes, I learned, went to prison for “rebaptizing” people based on this belief. He thought the choice and commitment must be consciously made, and that all people must be free to choose or reject Christ.

5. ...steadfastly hold the concept that local churches should have freedom under the Lordship of Christ. Obadiah Holmes remained adamant that his worship of Christ should not be under the control of a priest or bishop, or a magistrate or government. He and his Baptist contemporaries in Rhode Island opposed any government interference in religion and vice versa. Holmes believed this so strongly that he once took 30 lashes at the hands of magistrates and clergy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, rather than be denied his right to worship as he saw fit.

In many ways, Obadiah Holmes was fortunate in the personal ordeal he endured for religious freedom. Just years before in England, some Baptists had died in prison or were put to death for such religious and civil offenses as reading the Bible and believing in it as the sole authority for faith and practice; for denying the authority of creeds; and for practicing “believer’s baptism.”

Holmes chose the whip to defend his Baptist claim of the right to worship in the way he believed his personal relationship to Christ directed him to do. We don’t tie people to the stake and whip them for their beliefs in this country any longer, but traditional Baptists have learned a difficult lesson over the past 20 years. There are those in our own ranks who would pressure us to conform to prescribed theology and orthodoxy determined by a chosen few. Given his Baptist leanings and example in the 17th Century, Holmes would likely find it difficult to believe that 21st Century Baptists are having to continue to struggle in his same cause. Nor would he believe that such a struggle would be against clergy and lay people who presume to call themselves Baptist.

Holmes and other early Baptists in America turned us into what our pastor Edward Bolen often refers to as a “peculiar people.” I learned that much of our “peculiarness” started with men like Holmes. As long as Baptists cling to the principles, even the contrariness, that make us distinct, we are likely to continue to be regarded as “peculiar.” But, like Holmes, I’ll take “peculiar” any day over not having freedom!

Barry W. Jones is a Baptist layman. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

November 2003