What is a "Fundamental Independent Baptist Church?"

Independent means that we are not a part of a denominational or organizational structure that allows someone outside of our church, such as a denominational president, to dictate to our church how it is to operate.

“...earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” -Jude 3

Is a Baptist a Protestant?

Roe Valley Independent Baptist Church is a New Testament Baptist Church.  
We are believing, teaching, preaching, and practicing the truths that were believed, taught, preached, and practiced two thousand years ago. 

It gives me a feeling of stability to reflect that Roe Valley Baptist Church is in the stream of this long continuity of faith and practice.

The Christian world has been deceived in thinking you must be Catholic or Protestant.    

  To be a Protestant you have to agree that your denomination came out of the Catholic religion.  You support the fact that your founding church fathers protested against the teachings of the Catholic church, hence, the word protestant was born.

  Baptists are not Protestants and never have been. Even the Protestants admit to our existence. Listen to what they said:
Alexander Campbell in the Campbell-McCalla Debate - "The church at Jerusalem was a Baptist church, and the church at Samaria was a Baptist church."
Mosheim, Lutheran Historian - "The first century was a history of the Baptists."
John Ridpath, Methodist Historian - "I should not readily admit that there was a Baptist church as far back as 100A.D., though without doubt there were Baptist then, as all Christians were then Baptists."

    Protestants have not been around as long as Catholics.  They can only go back to the time of the reformation.  Martin Luther being in the for-front of this movement.  But Martin Luther was not a true Protestant, he was a reformer.  He wanted to reform the Catholic church rather than pull away from it.
  It was King Henry VIII who protested against the Catholic teaching on marriage and divorce, and therefore banished the Catholic title.  He set up the Anglican Church that is known today as the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, and the Church of Scotland.  (Westminster Abbey in London, England was built as a Catholic Cathedral.)    Around the world the Anglican church holds different titles.  Episcopalian is the title used in the United States.
  John Calvin came on the scene during this time with Presbyterianism.  John Knox brought the religion to Scotland, Wells, England, and Ireland.  John Wesley broke away from the Anglican church and started the Methodist movement.  And there you have the most well known protestant churches today.  All around four hundred years old.

   Catholics can trace there origin to the Roman Emperor Constantine, around 300 A.D..  Until this time in history all forms of Christianity were persecuted by the Roman Empire.
  Constantine, while fighting a war against the Christians, was converted to Christianity, and from there proclaimed Christianity to be the national Roman religion. 
  Catholic means universal.  The Roman Empire was controlling the civilized world.  The empire made it mandatory that you became a Christian.  This is how we get the name Roman Catholic. 
  If you did not accept the “worldwide religion” known as Catholic, you where persecuted.  History records great inquisitions that caused many to die because they would not convert to the Roman Catholic church. 

  The church that is the most obscure in today’s religious society is the Christian Church.  A self-governing body of believers that trace their beliefs straight back to the New Testament. 

We believe that there has always been a church or churches down through history that have believed the teachings of the Apostle Paul as we present them in our church today.  We are not an organization, but rather an organism.  A living part of the body of Christ.

Here are a few of the reasons why, in the midst of the dissolution of the basic institutions of civilization, being a Baptist increasingly gives me a feeling of spiritual and intellectual anchorage.

Baptists are a people. They have a historical identity. They have an historical image. Their continuity is the longest of any Christian group on earth. Their doctrines, principles, and practices are rooted in the apostolic age.

I am not a Pharisaical sectarian. But I don’t confuse Baptists with the Reformers. The Reformers wanted to reform the Roman Catholic Church; the Baptist were against the church. Because it was not a New Testament church, Protestantism originated in the Reformation. Protestantism is protestism. That’s negative. Negativism has within it the seed of its own disintegration.

The Baptists were not reformers. They were not protestors. They were positive.
Freedom of conscience is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.
Religious liberty is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.
Believer’s baptism is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.
Baptism of the believer by immersion in water, symbolizing the believer’s death, burial and resurrection with Christ, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.
The local, visible, autonomous assembly, with Christ as its only head and the Bible as its sole rule of faith and practice, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.

Worldwide missions is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. The Reformers had no missionary vision and no missionary spirit. For almost two hundred years after the Reformers, the Reformation churches felt no burden to implement the Great Commission.

What kind of a world would the Western world have been had Protestantism become its master?

Who but the Baptists kept Protestantism from becoming master?

Baptists are not Protestants and never have been. Even the Protestants admit to our existence. Listen to what they said:
Alexander Campbell in the Campbell-McCalla Debate - "The church at Jerusalem was a Baptist church, and the church at Samaria was a Baptist church."
Mosheim, Lutheran Historian - "The first century was a history of the Baptists."
John Ridpath, Methodist Historian - "I should not readily admit that there was a Baptist church as far back as 100A.D., though without doubt there were Baptist then, as all Christians were then Baptists."

Please look at this illustration on the true church.

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