Progressive National Baptist Convention
Baptist · 1961 · United States
Born of the tenure fight over J. H. Jackson's presidency and his 'gradualism' toward the civil rights movement: the Taylor-team ministers organized a convention committed to activism, and Martin Luther King Jr. affiliated, addressing every annual session from 1961 to 1967.
Progressive National Baptist Convention was formed in 1961. Progressive National Baptist Convention continues today. Progressive National Baptist Convention's institutional line runs back through National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., Southern Baptist Convention, Triennial Convention, Particular Baptists, 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 Progressive National Baptist Convention stand 7 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- In 1961
- Family
- Baptist
- Region
- United States
- Key figures
- L. Venchael Booth, Gardner C. Taylor, Martin Luther King Jr.
- Cause tags
- Politics, Governance
- Also known as
- PNBC
What it separated from
- Separated from National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc..
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.
Adherents
About 2,500,000 adherents (self-reported claim, date not stated by the source).
A figure the body itself has stated, often years old, with no census apparatus behind it.
Source: Britannica — dated claim
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.