National Association of Free Will Baptists

Heritage

American Free Will Baptists flow from two springs: the Palmer movement in eastern North Carolina, where Paul Palmer organized General Baptist churches from 1727, and the Randall movement Benjamin Randall began in New Hampshire in 1780. The streams converged in the National Association of Free Will Baptists, organized at Nashville in 1935, which built Welch College and the Randall House publishing ministry and remains strongest across the upper South. Summing RCMS 2020 rows for the Free Will Baptist bodies yields 2,217 congregations — our arithmetic across four listings, of which the National Association itself accounts for 1,930.

Theological family

Arminian Baptist: Christ died for all, grace is resistible, and a believer can, by persistent unbelief, forfeit salvation — the family's most distinctive doctrine among Baptists. Believers' baptism by immersion, and in many churches three ordinances rather than two: baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the washing of the saints' feet.

Who decides what

Congregational, organized upward through quarterly meetings, state associations, and the National Association, none of which can bind a local church; the association exists for missions, education, and a common voice.

What a first-time visitor would find

A visitor will find warm, conservative evangelical worship — congregational hymns and gospel songs, plain biblical preaching, an invitation — and, at appointed times in many congregations, a footwashing service conducted with unselfconscious tenderness.

What it has always cared about

The free offer of the gospel; footwashing kept as Christ's command when most traditions let it lapse; family-centered discipleship through Randall House curriculum; and a preaching culture that expects conversion to be experienced, not assumed.

Its gift to the wider church

The family kept alive, against the Calvinist mainstream of Baptist history, an unbroken Arminian Baptist witness — and its footwashing practice preserves an embodied humility the wider church keeps rediscovering.

Commonly confused with

With General Baptists, the other Arminian Baptist body — kin in doctrine, separate in history; and with the United American Free Will Baptist Church, the historically Black denomination in the same doctrinal stream, which has its own origin, history, and record here. Our summed count also includes small separate bodies such as the Convention of Original Free Will Baptists.

Range of views inside it

Congregations range from strictly traditional to contemporary-leaning; footwashing frequency varies; and the several Free Will bodies — Original, Pentecostal, and others — differ enough that the shared label should not be read as one organization.

Where National Association of Free Will Baptists churches are on the map

366 National Association of Free Will Baptists congregations appear on The Church Map, across 35 states.

• North Carolina — 76
• Tennessee — 30
• Ohio — 30
• Oklahoma — 24
• Missouri — 23
• Arkansas — 19
• South Carolina — 17
• Georgia — 17
• Kentucky — 13
• Alabama — 12