A little humor at the expense of Baptist church names: Underachieving Christian Settles for Third Baptist Church.
In theory, “First” Baptist should mean the first Baptist Church established in a place – to distinguish it from other churches that were organized later. In the 1800s in Texas, a Baptist Church in a town was often simply called the Baptist Church of [name of town]. When other churches were organized it seems that the trend developed from calling the Baptist Church of [name of town] to calling it the first Baptist Church of [name of town]. And then this developed into the name First Baptist Church. (I can’t speak for how this occurred in other places, but I would expect it to be much the same.) Nowadays, the name “First Baptist” seems to have a different sort of connotation.
This morphed historical practice creates some odd situations, when the “First” Baptist Church isn’t the first Baptist Church. I won’t mention names, but these are some actual situations in the area where I live.
I know of one church named “First Baptist Church” which is the oldest Baptist Church in a particular town, but is not the first Baptist Church. The first Baptist Church organized in the town died out, ceased to exist, but I suppose “Oldest Baptist Church” is not a very appealing name for a church.
I know of two different churches in neighboring counties in which the “First Baptist Church” was organized later than another church in the town – meaning they certainly are not the “first” Baptist Church. Both of these cases are cases of historically white churches not recognizing (at least in their naming) historically black churches that are older, and evidently first.
I know of two churches in a place that both used “First” in their names. They existed because of a church split. The churches added modifiers after “First” to distinguish which “First Baptist” was which. Eventually, the older church (the one really first) died out, ceased to exist, and the other church dropped the modifier to simply be “First Baptist Church” – but it still is not the “first.”
We Baptists sometimes are quite odd ducks.
