243 – Aug. 31 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

A Baptist by Conviction

 

1817 – Rev. Adoniram Judson, Sr. and his wife Abigail were immersed by Dr. Thomas Baldwin into the membership of the Second Baptist Church of Boston, Mass. They were the parents of Adoniram Judson, Jr. who was the renowned missionary to Burma. The elder Judson had graduated from Yale in 1776 and held strong to Puritan theology, especially repudiating Unitarianism and the Arian heresy that was rampant at that time. He became the pastor of a conservative Congregational church in Malden, Mass. During his brief ministry there, liberalism spread to the church family, and he was “dismissed” from the church. In time the Lord opened another place of service, but again he had to endure the trial of his son, and namesake, embracing agnosticism at Brown University. After Adoniram, Jr’s conversion to Christ, and later embracing Baptist convictions on his trip to the mission field, Adoniram, Sr. also came to the same conclusion concerning believer’s baptism, and rejected his pedobaptism, and resigned from the Congregational ministry. He continued to live faithfully as a Baptist until the Lord called him home in his seventy-fourth year. [Courtney Anderson, To The Golden Shore (Boxton: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), pp. 3-11. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp.476-477] Prepared by Dr. Greg Dixon