American Baptist National Ministries reclaims historic name

NEW YORK — National Ministries of American Baptist Churches USA marked the 178th anniversary of its founding April 27 by announcing the agency will reclaim its historic name of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.

“Outside of American Baptist circles and often within it as well, we spend a lot of time explaining what National Ministries is,” Executive Director Aidsand Wright-Riggins said in a ceremony at Mariners’ Temple Baptist Church in New York. “American Baptist Home Mission Societies is much more straightforward and self-explanatory.”

Mariners’ Temple, the oldest Baptist church location in Manhattan, was site of the sixth Triennial Convention of the General Missionary Convention of the United States of America for Foreign Mission. 

The name National Ministries was adopted after the organization joined in 1955 with the Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society, which was founded in 1887. Later it merged with the Baptist General Tract Society, founded in 1824, and the American Baptist Education Society, founded in 1888. Clifford Johnson, president of the National Ministries board said using the plural American Baptist Home Mission Societies honors the “various threads of our history.”