First Baptist Church (Petersburg, Virginia)
| First Baptist Church | |
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| Coordinates: 37°13′24″N 77°24′14″W / 37.22333°N 77.40389°W | |
| Location | 236 Harrison Street, Petersburg, Virginia |
| Country | United States |
| Denomination | Baptist |
| Website | www.firstbaptistpetersburg.org |
| History | |
| Founded | 1774 |
First Baptist Church (est. 1774) was the first Baptist church in Petersburg, Virginia; one of the first African-American Baptist congregations in the United States, and one of the oldest black churches in the nation. It established one of the first local schools for black children in the nation.
Its congregation was active during the 20th century Civil Rights Movement. Today it has the largest community outreach program in the city.
In the earliest decades of the Baptist Church in the American Southeast, it was stimulated by preachers from New England who generated the Great Awakening. As more churches were started, members came together in an association. With growth through the end of the American Revolutionary War, in 1781 the association of churches split into two parts: along state lines for Virginia and North Carolina. The twenty-one congregations in Virginia formed the Portsmouth Baptist Association, named after their first meeting place. Representatives worked together to form church policy. From 1810 to 1828 they began to work on Foreign Missions and Christian Education. Later they established Sabbath Schools.
The history of First Baptist Church started with scattered black members in Prince George County, Virginia worshipping as New Lights in 1756 after the Great Awakening. Baptist preachers had traveled widely in the South where they appealed to both blacks and whites in evangelical outreach. In the early years, such preachers strongly supported an anti-slavery message, based on the equality of men made in God's image. Their democratic message and willingness to welcome blacks in active roles attracted many new members to the Baptists, including slaves. At a time when the Anglican Church was the established church in the colony, in some areas energetic young white men without many other opportunities were the ones to take up leadership roles as Baptist preachers, and they challenged the class system of the colony.
In 1774 some of the black New Light members united under the Rev. John Michaels. Calling themselves the First African Baptist Church, they met in Lunenburg in a building on the plantation of Colonel William Byrd III. After their meetinghouse at the Byrd plantation burned in a fire, in 1820 free members of the congregation moved to Petersburg, Virginia, where there was a growing free black community. (From about 300 free blacks in 1790, this community in Petersburg grew tenfold to 3,224 by 1860, when it was the largest free black population in the South. On the eve of the Civil War, city residents also included about 6,000 enslaved African Americans and 9,000 whites.)
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