District of Columbia Baptist Convention

About District of Columbia Baptist Convention

On July 5, 1801, four months after the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson and eight months after the first meeting of Congress in the District, Baptists held their first worship service in the newly built Treasury Building (which later burned), adjacent to the White House. Eight months later First Baptist was organized. Luther Rice, a recent Baptist convert and fresh from his travels to India with Adoniram and Ann Judson, arrived in Washington in 1813, where he made his home and base of operations until his death in 1836. His greatest achievement was the binding into a spiritual union Baptists of all stripes along the Eastern Seaboard for world evangelism through the General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions (Triennial Convention). From his Mission Press office at 923-25 E Street NW, he published the Latter Day Luminary, then the Columbian Star, the first Baptist periodical to have a nationwide circulation. He founded Columbian College, now George Washington University, in 1821. With Obadiah Brown, pastor of First Baptist, and others, he began the Baptist General Tract Society in 1824. On November 26, 1877, six Washington churches met at the Calvary Baptist Church building to form the autonomous Columbia Association of Baptist Churches. They stated their reason for forming: to strengthen the fellowship among the churches, give greater efficiency for church extension, and "throw upon us a burden of evangelical duty . . . to watch for the purity, peace, and prosperity of the churches in Washington and its vicinity." As a precursor to this organization, in 1876, the 100th commemoration of the nation's independence, there had been a drive to raise money "to relieve our churches from building debts." By the turn of the century there were 13 churches with 5,324 members.

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