Baptist successionism

Baptist successionism (or Baptist perpetuity) is a controversial theory on the origins of the Baptist tradition. The theory postulates an unbroken lineage of churches (since the days of John the Baptist or the Book of Acts) which have held beliefs similar to those of current Baptists. Groups often included in this lineage include the Montanists, Paulicians, Paterines, Cathari, Waldenses, Albigenses, and Anabaptists. Although there exists variation within successionist theories, particularly in the inclusion of Messalianism, Jovinianism, alongside some Lollards and Hussites.

This view is held by some conservative Baptists and it has been associated with Baptist writers such as John Spittlehouse (1652), Jesse Mercer (1769–1841), Charles Spurgeon (1834 – 1892), and James Milton Carroll (1852 – 1931) among some others. However, modern scholarship and even most Baptists today recognizes the theory as being pseudohistorical, since it is the historical consensus that Baptists originates from 16th and 17th century English Puritanism within the Church of England. A minority of them still hold to an Anabaptistic influence, which although it accepts the connection between Anabaptism and English Baptists, does not hold to the rest of the successionist theory.