Free Baptists

Free Will Baptist (or plural: Free Will Baptists) is a denomination and group of people that believe in free grace, free salvation and free will. The movement can be traced back to the 1600s with the development of General Baptism in England. Its formal establishment is widely linked to the English theologian, Thomas Helwys who led the Baptist movement to believe in generalized atonement. He was an advocate of religious liberty at a time when to hold to such views could be dangerous and punishable by death. He died in prison as a consequence of the religious persecution of Protestant dissenters under King James I.

In 1702 Paul Palmer would go on to establish the movement in North Carolina and in 1727 formed the Free Will Baptist Church of Chowan. Many Calvinists became Free Will Baptists in the nineteenth century. With the establishment of Free Will Baptists in the South, Benjamin Randall developed the movement in the Northeastern United States, specifically Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

One of the most defining characteristics of the movement is the notion of self-governance of local churches. The notion of Free Will was a systematic rejection of the Puritan movement, due to its overall religious beliefs and lack of social mobility.

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