In this article, we will debunk the historical myth of Baptist successionism. In short, some Fundamentalist Baptists believe they can trace their history back 200 years to John the Baptist. Consequently, they believe they are the true Christian Church.
For the record, most Baptists reject this belief for obvious historical reasons. Despite the historical record and the myriads of contradictions, Fundamentalist Baptists who subscribe to this theory hold to it very avidly. Any history book or encyclopedia will reveal that Baptists were started by John Smyth in Amsterdam in the 1600s.
So, where does this belief come from? A tiny booklet called, The Trail of Blood, by J.M. Carroll.
The basic premise is that the Catholic Church brutally persecuted and killed anyone who disagreed with her teachings or tried to follow the Bible. In short: the Church tried to eradicate all bible-believing Christians. For this reason, these true Christians (Baptists) had to worship underground. They went by different pseudo names to protect themselves.
In The Trail of Blood, on page 19, it states that true Christians lost the name of Christian thanks to the Catholic Church hunting them down. Instead, they were called by other names: Montanists, Tertullianists, and Novationists, Paulicians, Albigensians, and so on. The tiny booklet, with no citations or references, talks about the persecution and bloodbath that these groups endured just to hold to the biblical truths.
If the author had done any research, he would not have deemed these groups Baptists. Many of these groups were Catholic, in fact, who subscribed to Catholic beliefs, whereas many others were not even Christian, but Gnostic. Not one of them, as we will see, endorsed Baptist theology.
Take the example of the Tertullianists. This book vainly attempts to say that Tertullianists were persecuted by the Catholic Church. Who were these Tertullianists. While Tertullian has a very small group for a very short time, he quickly joined the Montanists. He was not even the leader of the group, so one wonders who the Tertullianists were?
More importantly, throughout his entire life, Tertullian accepted all of the doctrines of the Catholic Church including: the true presence of the Eucharist, infant baptism, hierarchy of the Church, baptismal regeneration, and more. These doctrines are repugnant to Baptists. So why are they trying to claim Tertullian him as a pure, pristine Christian? Tertullian believed these things until his death. His only issue was his extreme position on lapsed Catholics during times of persecution. He claimed that if someone gave up or compromised the faith, they should not be allowed to return, even if they repented. That flew in the face of the Christians faith.
Similarly, we see this with Novation also. He was a Catholic priest who likewise still believed the doctrines of the Church, even after leaving, including infant baptism, the Sacraments, etc. He did not accept independent or autonomous churches as Baptists do, sola scriptura, adult only baptism, or anything remotely Baptist for that matter. Would Baptists really consider him a Christian?
The next group mentioned in this booklet is astounding. The Paulicians were alleged to be faithful Christ followers; however, they were not even Christians. They were Manichaean, or in other words, Gnostic. This is how bad the research is in this discredited little booklet.
Paulicians believed in a good god and a bad god. They thought that the evil god created this material world while the good god created the world to come. The reason there is so much suffering was because it was created by evil making everything on this planet evil, including marriage and our bodies. Consequently, Gnositcs rejected Jesus coming in the flesh which is exactly what John the Apostle condemns in chapter 4 of his First Letter of John. He says that anyone who does not accept Christ as coming in the flesh is the anti-Christ (1 Jn. 4:3; 1 Jn. 2:22).
The same is true for another group mentioned in this booklet: the Albigensians. The Albigensians were also Manichaeans who came from the Manichaean Gnostic tradition. The Paulicians rejected large portions of the Bible, and the Albigensians did also.
The Albigensians (Cathars), believed that Satan had tricked the angels to fall from heaven, and they were imprisoned in human bodies. Since this world and everything contained within it are evil, the goal for Gnostics was to acquire the secret knowledge, the Gnosis, that would free their spirits and free them from this world. The goal was to be pure spirits.
The Albigensians denied the divinity of Christ, and yet they are seen as Christians? They thought Jesus was a ghost who would never take on a real body of material evil. How could anyone sanely claim these groups were Christians? Yet, these groups are hailed as pure, pristine Christians in The Trail of Blood.
Two other groups mentioned in this booklet are the Paterines and the Arnoldists. The Paterines were a group from Milan in the 12th century who were Catholics, not Baptists. While they fully believed in all Catholic Church doctrines, they protested corruption and abuses that were occurring in Milan at the time, including simony (the buying of a priestly office).
The leader of the group went to the Pope, and the Pope sided with him telling the clergy in Milan to fix their problems and their corruption. Long story short: there was a backlash from the corrupt people in Milan against the Paterines. They persecuted them. However, they Paterines fought back and started to create wreak havoc on the unrighteous clergy. They even began to become violent trying to physically force people out of corruption.
Naturally, the pope condemned these actions, and this group then came into conflict with the Pope himself and the Church. They started to slide into Gnosticism and eventually become Gnositcs incurring condemnation. These people certainly were not Baptists. They were Catholics who eventually became Gnostics.
The Arnoldists were similar. They also began to protest simony through violence, and they went the Pope with their violent requests, and the pope refused to even listen to the madness. As a result, they raised an army, went to Rome, and kicked out the Pope from Rome. Twice.
Many of these groups that are upheld in The Trail of Blood were violent, like the Albigensians (Cathars). They had assassins! The Cathars assassinated Catholics, including Catholics who were peaceful, loving, who wouldn’t hurt anyone. Cathars would hunt down people they disagreed with and killed them. Thus, when the Catholic Church mounted a response to stop them and to protect innocent people, the Church gets unfairly flamed as being violent, killing anyone who dared to disagree with her teachings. However, that does not reflect accurate history.
Bottom line: it seems that anyone who came into conflict with the Catholic Church in some way, were exalted as true Christian heroes by The Trail of Blood despite what their heretical beliefs. Plain and simple, this is a failure to do proper research, or any honest research at all. Of course the Catholic Church is going to condemn these heresies: rejecting the divinity of Christ, promotion of suicide, rejection of marriage being evil, Jesus being a ghost, and so on.
J.M. Carroll did absolutely zero real research on any of these groups, and anyone believing in this booklet has been duped. That’s why the vast majority of Baptists, including Baptist historians, reject it as biased and uneducated nonsense. This book is wrong on every single group that it mentions.
The Trail of Blood says the Catholic Church rejects sola scriptura (the Bible alone). This is true, but only because it’s unbiblical and unhistorical. However, the Catholic Church loves the Holy Word of God, the Bible. It was the Church who canonized the Holy Scriptures, copied them for over 1000 years, translated them into different languages, and protected them from being destroyed by Barbarians, Vikings, and Muslims. We have a whole video on this subject here.
We also have a video here debunking the ridiculous and nonsensical claims from The Trail of Blood that the Catholic Church murdered 50 million. Carroll just throws out that number without any facts, citations, or sources, and we are just supposed to believe him after all his other failed research?
If I read this book, I would hate the Catholic Church also because it makes the Catholic Church out to be an evil and corrupt killing machine that hunted people down how disagreed with her. However, the book is not only wholly false; it is rejected by both Baptists and historians, and even Baptist historians. Only people who have not studied history for themselves have the unfortunate experience of falling prey to this train wreck of a booklet.
