Baptist Distinctives
1. First, Baptists accept the Bible as their ONLY sufficient authority for faith and practice. Because of this they reject the authority of councils, creeds, tradition, and hierarchial utterances unless they agree with Scripture. If they do agree, their authority still depends on Scripture. This does not mean that Baptists do not value the decisions of councils and the creeds they produce. They just reject them as a final authority and look only to Scripture. It is their supreme court of appeal.
2. Second, Baptist believe in a regenerate church membership. Only those who have been regenerated (born-again) can be received into the membership of the church. Unsaved adults and infants are rejected. Adults must at least profess salvation, and in some cases they have been required to give a verbal testimony of their salvation experience and evidence in their lives that they have been converted. Infants can not be saved, nor do they need to be. Salvation is by grace, through faith, and an infant cannot exercise faith. They are safe, however, not because they are infants but because of God's grace.
3. Third, Baptist believe in baptism by immersion and believers only. This alone constitutes Biblical baptism. They reject those who have been sprinkled, etc. They must be baptized Biblically. Because belief must precede baptism, they reject infant baptism. Further, they insist that those who went through the baptismal ceremony before they were saved must be baptized after they are saved. Otherwise, theirs is not a Biblical baptism. This has caused quite a furor among those who opposed the Baptists. They called it rebaptism, and Baptists suffered much persecution because of this practice. It is in the areas of infant baptism, baptism of believers only, and baptism by immersion that Baptists are singularly opposed by others to this day.
4. Fourth, Baptists believe in soul liberty or freedom of conscience. They do not believe that any civil or religious power has any right to dictate what they must believe in spiritual matters. Because of this belief, they have stood against a practice that has been used much during the history of the church. That practice came about when certain segments of the church used the civil powers to coerce individuals to believe their way....[this use of terror] ...led to the belief in separation of church and state. It was by the union of civil and religious powers that the earth has been stained by the blood of martyrs and the air has been polluted by the stench of burning bodies as men were put to death in the most horrible ways because they refused to believe what some-one else demanded they believe. This would not have been possible, to such an extent, without the cooperation of the civil government.
5. Fifth, Baptists believe in an equal brotherhood of believers. They hold that all believers are priests and that each has direct access to God through Jesus Christ our mediator. They do not have to go through the preacher. Because of this belief they reject any order of priests who could grant them access to God or deny such access. Since their access to God is through the one mediator, Jesus Christ, they do not believe it is necessary or proper to pray through Mary or some saint. They also deny any teaching about the Lord's Supper that requires the mediation of a priest to make it beneficial to them. This would require an unequal brotherhood and deny them soul liberty. Further their equal brotherhood belief based upon the teaching of Scripture leads them to govern themselves by a congregational form of government. They are not ruled by a board of elders or deacons. Nor do they allow any ecclesiastical power outside the local church to exercise control over them.
6. Sixth, Baptists believe in salvation by grace, through faith. The above-mentioned faith is personal faith. The one who is saved is the one who believes. This caused Baptists to reject proxy faith, or parents believing for their children. They also reject any system that makes necessary the intervention of a priest to convey salvation; and neither of the two ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, has any saving value. These things separate Baptists from others by a vast distance.
7. Seventh, Baptists believe in maintaining the original order of the church. This is the primitive order, the way things ought to be done according to Scripture. No matter what kind of order has developed since Bible times, or if no order at all has been maintained, Scripture is still the manual of church order. Since this includes all of the distinctives, it is needless to say that much opposition and persecution have resulted. Maintaining this order has definitely set Baptists apart from many and has evoked a good deal of ridicule and differing opinions from others. They have, however, stood fairly consistently, even during recent days when Baptists seem to desire to "be like all the nations.
[from "A PEOPLE FOR HIS NAME,"; by Dr.M.A.Seiver, 1989, University Publishers, Chattanooga, Tennessee