The Baptist Union of Wales:

A Short History by Revd Dr. D. Hugh Matthews 

“The Baptist Union of Wales and Monmouthshire” (which changed its name to “The Baptist Union of Wales” in 1959) came into being in 1866 when five of the nine Welsh-language Baptist Associations in Wales formed a Union. By 1881 the dissident associations had also joined. In 1914 the existence of a growing language problem led the Union to consider dividing itself into two wings – a Welsh Wing and an English Wing - each having its own President, Assembly and Council, but with a central headquarters, secretariat and bureaucracy located in Swansea. The English Assembly held its first meeting in September 1921. 

Unlike its sister Union in England, the Baptist Union of Wales is a Union of Associations. To belong to the Union and take part in its activities, individuals and churches must first belong to one of its member Associations. The churches that belong to the Union are (nominally at least) Particular or Calvinist in their theology and, until the middle of the twentieth century,  were almost exclusively closed-communion churches. Since the 1960s, many have become open-membership churches and most have embraced open-communion. A small number of churches still cling to the practice of laying hands on the newly baptised.  

The first Baptists to appear in Wales were the General or Arminian Baptists known as “Hugh Evans’s People” and surfaced in Mid-Wales circa 1646. Other Baptists were soon found in mixed Congregational/Baptist churches.  

In 1649, John Miles was sent by a group of Calvinistic or Particular Baptists meeting in the Glasshouse, Broad Street, London, and planted a church in Ilston, on the Gower peninsula, near Swansea. When he fled to America circa 1660, he left behind him in South Wales a band of Baptists distributed among five “regional” Particular, closed-communion Baptist churches, organised on quasi-presbyterian lines. These, along with Rhydwilym (founded in 1668) survived the persecution that followed the Restoration, and such was their strength and influence that by the beginning of the eighteenth century, all Welsh Baptist churches had embraced Particular (Calvinistic) theology and closed-communion. The Arminian practice of imposition of hands on the newly baptised (introduced at the insistence of Rhydwilym) was also a distinguishing feature, and considered an ordinance because of the reference in Hebrews 6:1-2. 

Welsh Baptist churches flourished and grew following the Toleration Act (1689), and fed by various Revivals that swept through the land, their membership reached 142,500 following the 1904/5 Revival. By today, the eleven Associations that make up the Baptist Union of Wales have a total membership of 14,800 in 444 churches.