When Baptists attempt to discover the origins of their tradition, they are faced with a historical dilemma: the search for Baptists’ roots hits a dead end in the sixteenth century.
Most acknowledge that Baptist tradition is a tributary flowing out of the Protestant Reformation, but others attempt to discover a line of historical continuity, of doctrine and practice, back to Jesus and even John the Baptist. These Baptists are commonly referred to as Baptist successionists.
Such a historical continuity is a factual impossibility, though its proponents continue aggressively promoting their theories.
First, we will summarize the popular theory, as espoused in the popular booklet The Trail of Blood. Second, we will analyze the Baptist successionists’ position historically. It is helpful to remember, according to W. Morgan Patterson, associate professor of church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that the “Baptist historians”—those who are proponents of this view—“have been preachers and pastors first of all, and historians second” (5).
The Trail of Blood was written by J.M. Carroll in 1931 and is published by Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. It is a small booklet of fifty-six pages, containing a proposed timeline of Baptist churches back to Jesus. By 1994, over 1.9 million copies had been printed, and it has gained great popularity among Fundamentalist groups. The author unabashedly denigrates the Catholic Church while attempting to establish his own legitimacy as the true church.
Carroll presumes to lay out the true marks of the Church through his interpretation of the Bible alone. Several of his marks of the Church—“landmarks or earmarks of this religion”—are the belief that the Bible, actually “the New Testament and that only,” is the sole rule of faith; Jesus is the only head of the church, with no visible head possible; and each congregation is autonomous. Carroll says the authority of each local congregation is “to be congregational, democratic. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (8). Carroll presumes to found all his assertions on Scripture, yet this “prerequisite” of church government is found not in Scripture, but in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Carroll makes great use of Catholic tradition and history when it suits his purposes, but he rejects and ignores them both when they contradicted his presuppositions.
The Trail of Blood theory alleges that true churches—as opposed to the Catholic Church—have been persecuted and forced underground throughout most of history. The alleged carnage and bloodshed following the persecutions is called the “Trail of Blood.” There is no evidence that any “Baptist churches” ever existed before the Reformation, but that, it is claimed, is because the Catholic Church destroyed all the evidence as it chased the Baptists to the ends of the earth.
Carroll identifies many divergent groups throughout history, claiming them as baptistic. These groups are a montage of unrelated sects and heretics, including the Albigensians, Cathars, Paulicians, Arnoldists, Henricians, and more. The Cathars and Albigensians taught that Christ was an angel with a phantom body, whose death and resurrection were only allegorical and the Incarnation impossible since the body is evil, created by evil. The Catholic Church was seen as corrupted and doing the work of the devil. These heretics also rejected the resurrection of the body and the existence of hell.
The Paulicians, similarly, believed that there were two fundamental principles: a good God and an evil God. The first is the ruler of the world to come and the second the master of the present world. By their reasoning, then, Christ could not have been the Son of God, because the good God could not take human form. They were basically dualists and Gnostics.
Other groups rejected the government of the Catholic Church but not her dogma. What linked many of the groups was not a denial of Catholic dogma, but a common concern for rigorous spirituality, a demand for the return to apostolic poverty, the refusal to take oaths, and criticism of lax clergy. Many believed in the Real Presence, the perpetual virginity of Mary, regenerational baptism, and the rest of Catholic dogma.
The Waldensians, started by Peter Waldo (c. 1150-1218), are an example of a group Baptist successionists would consider baptistic, maintaining “Baptist churches” in the midst of persecution during the medieval period. Edward T. Hiscox, author of the classic Baptist handbook Principles and Practices for Baptist Churches, claims that the Waldensians and the above-mentioned groups held to the principal points that “Baptists have always emphasized.” Hiscox, however, doesn’t inform his readers that the Waldensians for the most part believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary; the effectiveness of the sacraments; infant baptism; that “the Sacrifice [of the Mass], that is of the bread and wine, after the consecration are the body and blood of Jesus Christ”; and that good deeds of the faithful may benefit the dead, to name just a few. That Baptist successionists can claim the Waldensians as their ancestors—sharing a common belief and practice—is quite untenable, if not disingenuous.
Baptist James Edward McGoldrick, professor of history at Cedarville College, summarizes the situation well:
Perhaps no other major body of professing Christians has had as much difficulty in discerning its historical roots as have the Baptists. A survey of conflicting opinions might lead a perceptive observer to conclude that Baptists suffer from an identity crisis.
McGoldrick, after acknowledging his initial advocacy of “successionism,” explains,
Extensive graduate study and independent investigation of church history has, however, convinced [me] that the view [I] once held so dear has not been, and cannot be, verified. On the contrary, surviving primary documents render the successionist view untenable. . . . Although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the Reformers.
Baptist successionists frequently claim that they are not Protestants. To this, we can close with the words of Leon McBeth, professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary:
Are Baptists Protestants? . . . Whether one takes the shortcut answer, or goes into lengthy explanation, the answer is the same: Yes.
Such important Reformation doctrines as justification by faith, the authority of Scripture, and the priesthood of believers show up prominently in Baptist theology. Further, the evidence shows that Baptists originated out of English Separatism, certainly a part of the Protestant Reformation. Even if one assumes Anabaptist influence, the Anabaptists themselves were a Reformation people. The tendency to deny that Baptists are Protestants grows out of a faulty view of history, namely that Baptist churches have existed in every century and thus antedate the Reformation (62).