Thomas Helwys: The Baptist Original
John Smyth baptized him, but Helwys stands above him as the Baptist original.
The Reformation in England was initially driven by the personal and political machinations of King Henry VIII (of the Tudor dynasty). However, there were many others in England with political and religious ambitions who worked to pull and push the kingdom during an unstable time for all of Western Europe.
When Henry went out, his son Edward came in. But Edward’s short monarchial reign was supplanted by Bloody Mary. Mary was Edward’s half-sister, but that’s about all they had in common. Henry is credited with making England Protestant (a new religious and political institution), and Edward was the figurehead for some real Protestant advances of various sorts. After Edward, however, Mary yanked the kingdom back toward Roman Catholicism with a vengeance.
After Mary, there was Elizabeth, who led England into a full-fledged Reformation of its own, distinct from the other reformations going on in Germany, Zurich, and Geneva. During Elizabeth’s reign (which lasted 45 years), Protestantism made significant gains. And yet some Protestants started to argue that the English Reformation had not gone far enough. These Puritans (named thus because of their desire for a *purer* church) paid the price for their dissent in England under Elizabeth as well as James I after her (this King James was also James VI of Scotland, and he is also the king from whom the King James Bible got its name). Despite persecution, the Puritans also grew in number during that same period.
Over time, Separatists of various sorts arose from among the Puritan group, one of which was the Baptists. John Smyth was the first Baptist, and that honor is historically accurate. And yet Smyth was only a Baptist for a short time, and he almost immediately made an effort to join himself and his followers with a Waterlander church in Amsterdam. Thomas Helwys was among Smyth’s group, but he did not want to join the Waterlander church, and Helwys believed Smyth was wrong for asking to be received there.
Helwys was baptized as a believer by Smyth in 1609 after Smyth had baptized himself. Believer’s baptism (as opposed to paedobaptism) was and is a critical distinctive of all Baptists. Soon thereafter, Smyth’s efforts to join a Mennonite church (i.e., the Waterlanders of Amsterdam) insulted Helwys’s Baptist convictions, not least of which was belief in a physical apostolic succession. Smyth was a Baptist for only about a year.
It was Helwys, not Smyth, who was the first lifelong Baptist to establish a Baptist Church in England based on the doctrines and distinctives that have marked Baptists throughout the centuries. It was Helwys who penned a confession of faith for the first English Baptist church in history. It was Helwys who moved that congregation back to England in 1612 to be a faithful witness in a hostile environment.
Helwys codified and maintained the distinctives of Baptist theology and practice:
the chief authority of Scripture
congregational polity
believer’s baptism
local church autonomy
the two offices of pastor (or elder) and deacon
religious liberty
Helwys’s English Baptist church generated five other churches by 1626, all embracing the same fundamental doctrines and practices. And it was Helwys who made the first appeal in England for genuine religious liberty, even for the irreligious.
Thomas Helwys was imprisoned at Newgate shortly after he arrived back in England, and he died as a martyr for the cause of Baptist Christians in a land that claimed Christ as King.
Helwys’s contribution to Baptist and Christian history is impossible to overstate. For more than 400 years, Baptists around the world have been perpetuating the doctrines and practices that Helwys pioneered at great cost to himself.
All Baptists believe (along with Helwys) that the visible kingdom of Christ ought to be comprised of conscious believers who are united by baptism in an actual assembly of covenanted members.
May Christ advance His kingdom in this world until that final day when His invisible kingdom shall be wholly joined with His visible one.