Origin
"The Free Will Baptist denomination is a fellowship of evangelic believers united in extending the witness of Christ and the building of His Church throughout the world. The rise of Free Will Baptists can be traced to the influence of Baptists of Armenian persuasion who settled in the colonies from England.
The denomination sprang up on two fronts at almost the same time. The southern line, or the Palmer movement, traces its beginnings to the year 1727 when one Paul Palmer organized a church at Chowan, North Carolina. Palmer had previously ministered in New Jersey and Maryland, having been baptized in a congregation that had moved from Wales to a tract on the Delaware River in northern Pennsylvania.
The northern line, or Randall movement, had its beginning with a congregation organized by Benjamin Randall June 30, 1780 in New Durham, New Hampshire. Both lines of Free Will Baptists taught the doctrines of free grace, free salvation, and free will, although from the first there was no organizational connection between them.
The northern line expanded more rapidly in the beginning and extended its outreach into the West and Southwest. In 1910 - 1911 this body of Free Will Baptists merged with the Northern Baptist denomination, taking along more than half its 1,100 churches and all denominational property, including several major colleges. On December 28, 1916, at Pattonsburg, Missouri, representatives of remnant churches in the Randall movement reorganized into the Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptists.
Free Will Baptists in the southeastern United States, having descended from the Palmer foundation, had often manifested fraternal relationships with Free Will Baptists of the Randall movement in the north and west; but the slavery question and the Civil War prevented formal union between them. The churches in the southern line were organized into various associations and conferences from the beginning, and had finally organized into a General Conference by 1921. The merger of the northern movement did not affect these congregations with the Northern Baptists.
Now that the remnants of the Randall movement had reorganized into the Cooperative General Association and the Palmer movement had organized into the General Conference, it was inevitable that fusion between these two groups of Free Will Baptists would finally come. In Nashville, Tennessee, on November 5, 1935, representatives of these two groups met and organized the national Association of Free Will Baptists."
We now have a denomination that operates an Executive Office, Home Missions and Church Extension Department, Foreign Missions Department, Retirement and Insurance Department, Women Active For Christ Department, Master's Men Department, Free Will Baptist Bible College, Sunday School and Church Training Department. We also have our own Printing House.
