LANDMARK BAPTISTS

By R.L. Vaughn

On the old Baptist Board I mentioned starting a survey concerning independent unaffiliated Baptist churches that hold to “Landmark’ ecclesiology. This ecclesiology is most easily recognized in the practice of the churches (baptism performed only by Baptist church authority, closed communion for church members only [some extend this to like faith and order], and no pulpit affiliation with other denominations) and in the teaching concerning the church (that it is a local institution only and that Jesus started His church while He was here on earth).
I am wrapping up this survey and trying to put it into some format. I thought I would give a report of my findings in case some one is still interested.

I have found a total of 1252 churches which profess to at least the basic level of “Landmark” ecclesiology. As far as I have been able to find, all 1252 of these churches are completely unaffiliated. So this number does not include churches of the American Baptist Association, Baptist Bible Fellowship, Baptist Missionary Association, Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, Independent Baptist Fellowship, World Baptist Fellowship, etc. Fifteen (15) of the churches are in Canada and the rest are in the United States. There is at least one unaffiliated “Landmark” church in every state except VERMONT (there may be one or more in Vermont, but I have not contacted any churches there that profess this ecclesiology). The largest concentrations of these churches are -Texas (171), Kentucky (161). Tennessee (91), California (51), Ohio (50), Illinois (46), Florida (45), Arkansas (44), Oklahoma (42), and West Virginia (41).

These are preliminary numbers and subject to change when the final summation is made. (If there were a graemlin that looked tired I would place him here)

I have 33 unaffiliated Landmark Baptist churches in Indiana that I have on my list (I only listed the top ten states on my first post). There are other churches as well, such as the Bethel Association around the Indianapolis area. The only church I found that seemed close to Ferdinand is Seventh Street Baptist Church on 304 7th St. in Cannelton, IN. I do not personally know anything about them, just that it is supposed to hold the Landmark doctrines on the church. lam not very familiar with Indiana.

I have completed my unaffiliated Landmark Baptist Church survey. Actually, I quit - there is really no end to something like this. After weeding out duplicates and/or churches for which I discovered some denominational affiliation, I have a total of 1283 churches. I have compiled no actual membership statistics for these churches, but, based on the average size of churches from known landmark Baptist statistics (ABA, BMAA, etc.) the membership of these churches should be approximately 200,000. (155 is the number I used for the average)

I have also identified 35 associations that hold Landmark ecclesiology - 3 general associations, 1 state association, and 31 unaffiliated local associations (the 3 general and I state also have local associations affiliated with them). In these 35 associations I have identified 36~7 churches with 569.338 members. Most of these statistics are from the year 2000, but, for 8 or 10 of the local associations, the latest stats I could find were early 1990’s. If these numbers are combined with the independent churches, there are almost 5000 churches that hold Landmark ecclesiology, representing about 770,000 members. I am still of the opinion that there are nearly twice as many unaffiliated independent landmark Baptists as I have been able to identify.

Add to these facts, that the groups of Baptists often identified as Primitivistic (Central Baptists, Duck River/Kindred Baptists, Old Regular Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Regular Baptists, and United Baptists) usually hold an ecclesiology in practice like Landmarkism (they do not accept baptisms from other orders, do not use ministers from other orders, and practice closed communion), churches in the United States holding this form of ecclesiology probably number 8000 to 10,000 with over 1,000,000 members. These churches are usually not identified as Landmark Baptists because the term is usually limited to missionary Baptists.

This also does not consider that a number of churches in the Baptist Bible Fellowship, Southwide Baptist Fellowship, World Baptist Fellowship, and even the Southern Baptist Convention would identify withthis doctrine and practice. This shows that, while still a small grouping compared to the total number of Baptists in the United States, Landmark-type Baptist ecclesiology does have an important place in American Baptist life.