The Kingston Seventh Day Baptist Conference at Charles Street.- Michael Sloley
Seventh Day Baptists emerged as a part of the English Reformation, organising their first church in London in the 1650s. That church, the Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church, has continued for over 350 years. Today, that church has a large Jamaican population.
The first Seventh Day Baptist church in America began in 1671 in Newport, Rhode Island. It was not until 1923 that the church was established in Jamaica and a group of churches that originally were part of the Seventh Day Adventist denomination, withdrew from that affiliation, and made contact with Seventh Day Baptists in the United States. Missionaries were sent to the island, the churches embraced their teachings and thus the oldest organised sabbath-keeping church in the world, made its way to these shores.
Like other Baptists, Seventh Day Baptists believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the Bible as the inspired word of God, baptism of believers by immersion, and the congregational form of church government. The primary belief and practice which makes Seventh Day Baptists distinct is their observance of the biblical seventh day of the week as a day of rest and worship, not as a means to salvation, but as an act of loving obedience to God, the creator of the sabbath.
In the United States, the Seventh Day Baptist Centre is located in Janesville, Wisconsin, while in Jamaica the Conference's head office is located at 29 Charles Street in Kingston. The church has about 30 branches in Jamaica with the parishes of Hanover and Westmoreland being the only ones where branches are yet to be established. Jamaicans have figured prominently as pioneers in the establishment of at least five Seventh Day Baptist churches in the United States and Canada, and a Jamaican, Rev. Joe A. Samuels, serving as the president of the General Conference in the U.S. and Canada. Rev. Samuels is a former Pastor of the Kingston Seventh Day Baptist Church and corresponding secretary of the Jamaica Seventh Day Baptist Conference.
