The First Baptist Church of Jacksonville is a large Southern Baptist church located in Downtown Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. With its current membership at 28,000 and with an average attendance of around 7,500 for Sunday services, it is the third largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention. First Baptist Church has its origins in the oldest Baptist congregation in Jacksonville, Bethel Baptist Church, established in 1838. The church experienced a period of considerable growth in the mid-20th century, and now encompasses eleven square blocks of downtown Jacksonville. Several former pastors, including Homer G. Lindsay, Jr. and Jerry Vines, were widely influential in the Southern Baptist Convention, leading it in both growth and a shift towards conservatism and fundamentalist Christianity.
Read more about First Baptist Church Of Jacksonville: History
Famous quotes containing the words baptist and/or church:
“I am perhaps being a bit facetious but if some of my good Baptist brethren in Georgia had done a little preaching from the pulpit against the K.K.K. in the ‘20s, I would have a little more genuine American respect for their Christianity!”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“It is manifest therefore that they who have sovereign power, are immediate rulers of the church under Christ, and all others but subordinate to them. If that were not, but kings should command one thing upon pain of death, and priests another upon pain of damnation, it would be impossible that peace and religion should stand together.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)