The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. is one of the largest religious organizations among African Americans. The convention has over 30,000 churches and over 6,000,000 members. It is the second largest Baptist organization in the world, after the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Foreign Mission Baptist Convention was organized in Montgomery, Alabama in 1880 to spread the gospel of Christ to other countries. Its founders stressed preaching the gospel to all people as an answer to what they considered the shortcomings of a segregating church. Elias Camp Morris, (1855-1922), helped found the Foreign Mission Convention and led in a move to consolidate several conventions. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., formed in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28, 1895, represents the successful merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention (org. 1886), and the Baptist National Education Convention (org. 1893).
Two convention bodies have grown out of divisions in the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. - the National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. (formed 1915) and the Progressive National Baptist Convention (formed 1961). The Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention was founded in 1897 by dissatisfied members of the newly formed National Baptist Convention. Today the Lott Carey Convention draws members from all the missionary National Baptist bodies. A spiritual gifts movement beginning around 1992, led by NBCUSA pastor Paul S. Morton, grew among all the National Baptist Conventions and resulted in the formation of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship. The first Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship Conference was held in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1994.
Baptists Around the World, by Albert W. Wardin, Jr.
Dictionary of Baptists in America, Bill J. Leonard, editor
Salvatore, Nick, "Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America", Little Brown, 2005, Hardcover ISBN 0-316-16037-7. (Contains lengthy discussion of politics of the National Baptist Convention including vignettes describing efforts by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others to depose Joseph H. Jackson in the 1950s.)
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