General Baptists
Baptist · 1609 · Amsterdam; England
English Separatist exiles concluded that baptism belongs to professing believers only; Smyth baptized himself and the congregation (1609), and Helwys's remnant carried the practice — with history's first sweeping English plea for universal religious liberty — back to London. The 'General' name marks their general (unlimited) atonement.
General Baptists was formed in 1609. General Baptists is a segment of the spine, a drawing convenience rather than a body that ended. General Baptists's institutional line runs back through Congregationalists, Church of England, Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and General Baptists stand 4 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- In 1609
- Family
- Baptist
- Region
- Amsterdam; England
- Key figures
- John Smyth, Thomas Helwys
- Cause tags
- Doctrine
- Also known as
- Arminian Baptists
What it separated from
- Separated from Congregationalists. From the Gainsborough Separatist exile congregation; documented theological contact with the Waterlander Mennonites in Amsterdam is a dispute note, not a parentage (companion §1).
On the tree
Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.
Claimed lineage
What this tradition says about its own origin · remnant chain
An unbroken succession of true baptistic churches from the apostles, through groups such as the Cathari, Waldensians, and Anabaptists, to the Baptists (Landmarkism; 'The Trail of Blood').
Its own sources: G. H. Orchard, A Concise History of the Baptists (1838); J. R. Graves, Cotton Grove Resolutions (1851); Old Landmarkism (1880); J. M. Pendleton, An Old Landmark Re-Set (1854); J. M. Carroll, The Trail of Blood (1931).
The documented record: Scholarly consensus: 17th-century English Separatist origins; the 1644 First London Confession itself protested the churches were 'falsely called Anabaptists'; standard refutation J. E. McGoldrick, Baptist Successionism (1994).
In the explorer's claimed view this renders as a dashed line.
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.