Bethel Baptist Church (Newton Co.) Minutes

Bethel Baptist Church was constituted in Newton County, Mississippi, February 1839. The church's articles of faith were written and dated January 27, 1839. Newton County was created from the southern half of Neshoba County, February 25, 1836 and was a part of the extensive region ceded to the United States by the Choctaws in the treaty of Dancing Rabbit, 1830.

The Baptist religion began in Mississippi with the efforts of an early Protestant settler, Richard Curtis and his friends of Cole's Creek in 1780. The Baptists' evangelistic fervor brought protests from Catholic priests in the area, which was still under Spanish rule. When Spanish rule ended, and the territory became a province of the United States in 1817, the Baptist church developed rapidly throughout the territory because the religion had a particularly strong appeal among independent farmers who were settling there. Two of the strongest characteristics of Mississippi Baptists are evangelicalism and the promotion of a missionary spirit. The pioneer preachers were typically zealous, earnest and energetic men.

Early Baptist churches had difficulty in finding ministers to serve their congregations. Most churches were small congregations with usually less than fifty members and limited financial resources. The ministers were male members who rotated responsibility, or itinerant ministers who traveled among many congregations and rarely received money for their services.

Early Baptists recognized the need for a permanent record and authorized a person to record membership and church officer meeting minutes in a large, blank book not unlike a ledger. The first printed minutes of Baptist meetings date back to 1808. Today, the Baptist denomination is the largest organized church group in Mississippi.