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| Baptists in Wales pre-1914 |
The first Baptist congregation in Wales was established at Ilston, near Swansea, in 1649. The moving spirit was John Miles, a native of Herefordshire, who settled in The Gower after the Civil War. Under him, the congregation reached 261 members and other congregations quickly followed at Hay on Wye, Llantrisant, Carmarthen and Abergavenny. Miles later emigrated to America and established a Baptist Church in Massachusetts. These early congregations were all Calvinist in doctrine. As the denomination developed many were Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists, like Micah Thomas but others were General (Arminian) Baptists.
Baptists are distinguished from other mainstream Protestant groups by their commitment to the practice of believer's baptism (credobaptism) by total immersion, as in New Testament times, and their rejection of infant baptism. The practice of total immersion required water, initially in the form of local rivers or the sea and later in the provision of baptismal pools either external or incorporated within chapel buildings. Both Independents and Baptists embraced the New Testament idea of autonomous gathered congregation of believers free to appoint its own ministers and officers and self-governing in all its affairs of spiritual oversight and administrative and financial organisation. While congregations worked out their own systems they drew on the help of other congregations where necessary. Voluntary Associations for mutual advice and support were important from the beginning.
The Restoration in 1660 heralded a turbulent period for Independents and Baptists. The 1662 Act of Uniformity and the Conventicle Acts of 1664 and 1670 were intended to enforce obedience to the established Church of England. The Corporation Act (1661) and Test Act (1673) reduced the civil rights of dissenters. The level of persecution under these Acts varied at different times and in different parts of Wales, but there is no doubt that many committed members of dissenting congregations suffered significantly. The 1689 Toleration Act, while not removing the civil restraints, restored some measure of liberty of worship, within strictly controlled parameters. A very important provision of the Act was that for the first time dissenters could build their own places of worship. Hitherto they had mostly met in private houses but from 1690 Independents and Baptists began to erect chapels. In 1695, the Abergavenny congregation built the first Baptist chapel in Wales at Llanwenarth, near Gofeilon. The total number of Baptists at the end of the seventeenth century was in the region of 500. Another consequence was the re-establishment of a Baptist Association for churches in England and Wales. In 1700 a separate Association was created for the Welsh churches. The nine churches in it were located in Monmouthshire, Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire, though membership extended into Radnorshire, Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire, with only a very small presence in North Wales.
Growth of Independent and Baptist congregations paved the way for their emergence as major forces in later mainstream Nonconformity. The spiritual fervour of the Methodist revival in the mid eighteenth century inevitably influenced the two major dissenting groups. A particularly notable figure was Christmas Evans, a powerful and inspiring preacher whose imagination earned him the nickname “The Bunyan of Wales”. Born near Llandysul, Ceredigion, he became a Baptist minister and in 1789 settled on the Llŷn peninsula. Moving to Llangefni, Anglesey two years later, he established a strong Baptist community at Ty Cildwrn Chapel and raised money for new chapels through preaching tours of south Wales.
By 1800 the Baptists had a total membership of around 9,000 and over 60 chapels. A decade earlier the single Welsh Association was divided into three separate ones covering the south-west, the south-east and the north.
The north remained far the weaker part of the movement however, with only eight chapels recorded before 1800. Damage was also caused in 1795 when a group under the leadership of J R Jones of Merioneth seceded, forming the basis for the later Scotch Baptists which were formed in many parts of North Wales. Calvinist in doctrine they had a congregationalist type organisation. In the mid nineteenth century about half of them joined the “Campbellites”, more properly known as the Churches of Christ, established by Alexander Campbell. David Lloyd George was raised and baptised in a Scotch Baptist/Campbellite church.
Throughout the nineteeth century Nonconformity in Wales was dominated by the older Dissenting movements. Independents and Baptists, and the newer Calvinistic and Wesleyan Methodists. Definitions of membership varied widely between the denominations, making comparisons difficult. Even within a single denomination returns are unlikely to be equally reliable from every congregation in every period. Nevertheless, it is clear that each of the four main denominations saw enormous increases in membership throughout the nineteenth century.
The 1851 Religious Census recorded that the various Baptist groups – General, Particular, New Connexion, Scotch – had a total of 533 places of worship. Although there are many questions about the reliability of the statistics, numbers recorded as present at the best attended service – in most cases Sunday evening – confirm total attendance of 83,324 at Baptist congregations. The census also showed that, along with Independents, Baptists were strongest in South Wales.
Before the 1830s the main denominations, particularly the Methodists, had been conservative in their political attitudes. However, increasingly Nonconformists acquired a single voice on such issues as denouncing the 1847 report into Welsh education, the rise of the Anglican Oxford Movement, the civil disabilities imposed on them and the call for electoral reform. This unity enabled the Welsh Nonconformists to move to a position of considerable political influence.
In 1866 the Baptist Union of Wales (Undeb Bedyddwyr Cymru) was formed to serve the needs of Baptists in Wales, whilst in 1891 the General and Particular Baptists came together to form the Baptist Union of Great Britain. The majority of congregations in Wales were members of the Welsh BU through a strong allegiance to the Liberal Party to which they looked for liberation from their grievances and with whom they shared a central belief in the importance of individual choice.
Despite the successes of the nineteenth century and the hopes raised by the 1904 revival the twentieth century was to witness a catastrophic decline in Welsh Nonconformity. Membership of all the main denominations peaked early in the century. Taking both Welsh- and English-speaking congregations into account Baptists appear to have reached their highest figure as early as 1906 (143,584 members).
The Bible Society’s census of churches in Wales in 1982 showed Baptists then had 50,200 members. Challenge to Change, the report of a Welsh Churches Survey conducted by the Bible Society (1995), showed that there were 699 Baptist chapels (down from 833 in 1982). Faith in Wales: Counting for Communities, published by Gweini (2008) estimated that there were 557 Baptist congregations.
