In turning to the subject under consideration it seems fitting that
we should first review those facts and events which gave us our
denominational existence. Such a course, it seems to the writer, will
serve to give us a proper “setting.” It is not definitely known just
when, where and by whom, Baptist principles were first propagated upon
the American continent; it is, however, an historic fact that these
principles assumed organic form in Providence, R. I., in 1639, in the
constitution of a Baptist church under Roger Williams as pastor. Other
churches soon followed, out of the union of which there early rose
Associations, Conventions and Missionary Societies.
In 1620, nineteen years before the organization of the church in
Providence, the African was brought into Virginia as a slave. The
North and the South joined heartily in the work of binding their black
brother with the chains of cruel bondage. Thus the naked savage was
taken from his freedom and from his gods and chained to the chariot
wheels of Christian (?) civilization to be coerced, dragged into new
observations, new experiences, and a new life.