Matrix of Reformed Baptists

The three part series Matrix of Reformed Baptists seeks to discover the religious, political, and social pressures which formed and developed that which has come to be known as Reformed Baptist Churches.  Without knowing something of these shaping influences over the course of seventeen hundred years of Church history, we cannot rightly understand how these churches came to be what they are today.

In Lesson One it will be seen that from the time of Constantine onward the dominant expression of the Christian Church has been that system wherein the State compelled its citizenry to embrace the “Christian” religion.  From the 4^th century through the 15^th century this Constantinian Model of Christianity was Roman Catholicism.  After the first few tumultuous and uncertain years of the Protestant Reformation the dust settled and a Constantinian Model of Christianity could be found throughout European countries not only in the Roman Catholic version but also in the Reformed version.  But whether Catholic or Reformed it was Constantianism still.  It was the Corpus Christianum of old whether supported by a Catholic Emperor or a Protestant and Reformed King.
When in the 16^th Century the Pope was removed as head of the Catholic Church of England and Henry VIII declared himself to be head of the Church of England nothing essentially changed.  The Church goers in London were just as much compelled in religion under the one as the other.  This series of social and political pressures brings us to the turbulent 17^th century in England where Baptist Churches were brought into being. Read the rest HERE