Amsterdam
Trading city in Holland. English Separatists took refuge here in the early seventeenth century, and here the congregation of John Smyth and Thomas Helwys adopted believers’ baptism and printed its confession of 1611.
Amsterdam is a port in the Dutch province of Holland. William Bradford writes that English people persecuted for their religion had gone to live there, in a country where they heard there was freedom of religion for all, and that his own congregation spent about a year in the city before moving to Leiden; he notes that it had the sea trade that Leiden lacked (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 1, 3 (pp. 15, 23)). The confession issued by Thomas Helwys and his party in 1611 is titled as the declaration of “English people remaining at Amsterdam in Holland” (Declaration of Faith (1611), title page (McGlothlin, p. 85)), and Helwys wrote the next year against English leaders who had fled to foreign countries to save their lives (Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, p. 205). See the First Baptist Congregations.
What happened here
- 1609, estimated dateThe First Baptist Congregations
English Separatists in Amsterdam, led by John Smyth, reject infant baptism and found their church anew by baptizing believers on confession of faith. Thomas Helwys leads part of the group back to London and argues that no king has power over conscience.
- 23 August 1948, firm dateThe World Council of Churches Is Founded
Delegates of 147 churches from 44 countries, meeting in Amsterdam, constitute the World Council of Churches as a fellowship of churches that accept Jesus Christ as God and Saviour. The Roman Catholic Church takes no part.