Reformed Baptists, Preserving the Traditions of English Puritans

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I’ve been thinking about this denomination (they prefer ‘association of independent churches’) lately, having grown up in it some, visited two of them lately at the request of friends and read some threads here lately. What distinguishes Reformed Baptist churches from others?
  1. Churches are mostly wheat. Chaff carefully winnowed and sent to the local Evangelical Free church.
  2. John Bunyan quoted in sermons more often than St. Peter.
  3. Preaches against every megachurch but Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle.
  4. Great care taken to teach children that they’re not Christians.
  5. Requires everyone to follow readings in personal Bible from home.
  6. Hides empty walls in front of church with bunches of fake plants.
  7. Likes Oliver Cromwell more than Emperor Constantine.
Any others?
 
spoiltvictorian said:
I’ve been thinking about this denomination (they prefer ‘association of independent churches’) lately, having grown up in it some, visited two of them lately at the request of friends and read some threads here lately. What distinguishes Reformed Baptist churches from others?
  1. Churches are mostly wheat. Chaff carefully winnowed and sent to the local Evangelical Free church.
  2. John Bunyan quoted in sermons more often than St. Peter.
  3. Preaches against every megachurch but Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle.
  4. Great care taken to teach children that they’re not Christians.
  5. Requires everyone to follow readings in personal Bible from home.
  6. Hides empty walls in front of church with bunches of fake plants.
  7. Likes Oliver Cromwell more than Emperor Constantine.
Any others?
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Some factual evidence please.
Spurgeon was NOT a puritan.
 
grampben said:
Some factual evidence please.
Spurgeon was NOT a puritan.
Click to expand...
I should clarify that I’m now LCMS Lutheran leaning Catholic. Spurgeon is called the “Heir of the Puritans” for his admiration of them and similar teachings, and being pastor of a church started by Dissenters in the 1600s.
 
spoiltvictorian said:
I should clarify that I’m now LCMS Lutheran leaning Catholic. Spurgeon is called the “Heir of the Puritans” for his admiration of them and similar teachings, and being pastor of a church started by Dissenters in the 1600s.
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Puritans were not baptists though.
 
spoiltvictorian said:
I’ve been thinking about this denomination (they prefer ‘association of independent churches’) lately, having grown up in it some, visited two of them lately at the request of friends and read some threads here lately. What distinguishes Reformed Baptist churches from others?
  1. Churches are mostly wheat. Chaff carefully winnowed and sent to the local Evangelical Free church.
  2. John Bunyan quoted in sermons more often than St. Peter.
  3. Preaches against every megachurch but Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle.
  4. Great care taken to teach children that they’re not Christians.
  5. Requires everyone to follow readings in personal Bible from home.
  6. Hides empty walls in front of church with bunches of fake plants.
  7. Likes Oliver Cromwell more than Emperor Constantine.
Any others?
Click to expand...
Kinda snotty, ain’t it?
 
Charles Spurgeon was hardly a Puritan.

As a biography of him published by Moody Press records, he frequently would smoke “a cigar to the glory of God.”

He liked a glass of wine, too.
 
Well, there are “puritans” and there are Puritans.

The Puritans as an historically identifiable bloc within the Anglican Church of the post-reformation periood were not opposed to drinking or smoking or enjoying the good things of life.

The word has come down to us denoting, as Mencken wagged it, “someone concerned that someone somewhere is having a good time” but this is unfortunate.

They were certainly thorough-going reformers who wanted change in the established church “without tarrying” but they weren’t the anti-fun fuddy duddies we are left with by popular characterization.

The English Baptists descend from the Separatists who were dissenters who broke from the established church as much over the failure of that church to adequately reform as over doctrinal and ceremonial issues. In the main lines of doctrine however they bear a strong family resemblance though due mainly to their common acceptance of a rather strident variety of Calvinism.
 
spoiltvictorian said:
  1. Great care taken to teach children that they’re not Christians.
Click to expand...
Hmm. The criticims I’ve heard of them are mostly the opposite of this, namely that Reformed Baptists often drift too far towards the Catholic/Protestant model of inclusion in the covenant by virtue of parentage. For example, many Reformed Baptists teach their children to repeat certain catechisms, something that a lot of Baptists would strongly object to.
grampben said:
That one is not a christian until they ‘accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and saviour’ I presume.
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No, I don’t think so. Altar calls and “decisions for Christ” and that kind of thing are usually played down, if not outright condemned by most of the Reformed Baptists I have known. They believe that many of the people who supposedly accept Christ are false converts, who have not truly been born again, but are just making a decision based on emotion.

They are much more Calvinistic in their emphasis, stressing perseverance and living a life of faith.
 
Ethan_Enoch said:
No, I don’t think so. Altar calls and “decisions for Christ” and that kind of thing are usually played down, if not outright condemned by most of the Reformed Baptists I have known. They believe that many of the people who supposedly accept Christ are false converts, who have not truly been born again, but are just making a decision based on emotion.

They are much more Calvinistic in their emphasis, stressing perseverance and living a life of faith.
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Most calvinist churches emphasise the need for conversion though. I don’t mean in an altar call style though lol.
 
grampben said:
Most calvinist churches emphasise the need for conversion though. I don’t mean in an altar call style though lol.
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A lot of Calvinists though, particularly the English (Thomas Hooker, for example) wouldn’t look on conversion as intantaneous, but rather a process.
grampben said:
But he was not a puritan, he was a baptist.
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Well, you could also say that Reformed Baptists aren’t really Reformed. But that is what they call themselves. And Spurgeon identified himself as both a Baptist and a Puritan.
 
  1. Wear orange once per year to celebrate the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
 
Is it true that Isaac Newton was a “Puritan” and on his death bed confessed that there is no God?
 
Gabriel_of_12 said:
Is it true that Isaac Newton was a “Puritan” and on his death bed confessed that there is no God?
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I would not call him a Puritan. He was an Anglican who seems to have held some heterodox positions. He has been accused of being an anti-Trinitarian, and even an Arian. Whether that is accurate or not, I doubt that he could have subscribed to any of the Reformed or Puritan confessions.

On his deathbed he did refuse to take the sacraments, but I have never heard of him denying God’s existence.

There are two conflicting reports (that I know of) of what his last words were. Either:
I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
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Or:
Let me think… I wonder if an anvil will drop like an apple?
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  1. Preaches for an hour about tithing but thinks it’s popish to pass a plate.
 
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