Daniel Taylor (Baptist pastor)

The Rev Dan Taylor (1738–1816) was the founder of the New Connexion of General Baptists, a revivalist offshoot from the Arminian Baptist tradition, one of two main strands within the British Baptist movement.

From Methodist to General Baptist

Dan Taylor was born at Sourmilk Hall, Northowram, near Halifax, Yorkshire, on 21 December 1738 to Azor Taylor and his wife Mary (Willey). Like his father he was a coal-miner who joined the Wesleyan Methodists in 1761, during his early twenties. Whilst never straying from Wesley's Arminianism, Taylor quickly tired of what he saw as Wesley's authoritianism. He determined to become a Baptist and set off for Boston, where there was a General Baptist church; on the way he came across a Baptist church at Gamston and in February 1763 was baptised there instead. Taylor was ordained a General Baptist and had begun organising the Birchcliffe Baptists, an independent grouping of dissenters around Hebden Bridge. The following year the Birchcliffe group built their own chapel. Taylor, a young man used to manual labour, quarried the stone himself.

Building the Chapel proved an expensive burden, so Taylor travelled on foot to Leicestershire in search of support. Among the independent Baptist congregations throughout the east Midlands, there was a great deal of disillusionment with the current state of the General Baptists. Traditionally non-creedal, many General Baptist congregations were becoming increasingly liberal in their doctrine, obliging the more orthodox and the more evangelical among them to reconsider their allegiance.

Founding the New Connexion of General Baptists

In June 1770 Dan Taylor was able to bring together many of those Arminian Baptists disenchanted with the ‘Old General Baptists’ in ‘The New Connexion of General Baptists’. Well organised from the outset, the Connexion thrived, particularly in the industrial areas of the English Midlands. By 1817, a year after Taylor's death, the Connection had 70 chapels.

Taylor ministered to the Birchcliffe Baptist Church for twenty years until 1783 when he moved to a chapel in Wandsworth, south west London.

In 1798, the Academy of the New Connexion of General Baptists was founded in Mile End, east end of London. In 1813 it moved to Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

Daniel Taylor's younger brother, John Taylor, was also a Baptist pastor.

Bibliography

• Dan Taylor (1775). Fundamentals of Religion in Faith and Practice. Leeds.
• Daniel Taylor (1777). An humble essay on Christian baptism (2 ed.). London: J. W. Pasham.
• Daniel Taylor (1780). An Humble Essay on the right use of Earthly Treasure. In three letters to a fellow-labourer in the work of the Ministry (2 ed.).
• Dan Taylor (1782). The Stroke of Death Practically Improved. London.
• Daniel Taylor (1784). Our Saviour's Commission to his Ministers, explained and improved. Leeds: Thomas Wright.
• Dan Taylor (1784). The Consistent Christian; Or the Truth and Peace, Holiness, Unanimity, Steadfastness and Zeal. Leeds: Griffith Wright.
• Dan Taylor (1787). A Second Dissertation on Singing in the Worship of God. London.
• Daniel Taylor (1788). Observations on the Rev. Andrew Fuller's Reply to Philanthropos. London: T. Bloom.
• D. Taylor (1789). The Eternity of Future Punishment Asserted and Improved. A Discourse on Matt. Xxv. 46. London: Cicero Press.
• D. Taylor (1790). An Essay on the truth and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. London.
• Dan Taylor (1792). A Compendious View of the Nature and Importance of Christian Baptism (3 ed.). London.
• D. Taylor (1794). A Sermon [on Ps. xlviii. 14] occasioned by the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Taylor ... October 22, 1793 ... with a short account of her life and character. London.

Further reading

• Adam Taylor, ed. (1820). Memoirs of the Rev. Dan Taylor. London.
• Dan Taylor's 'Reasons for Dissenting from the Church of England', as well as 'The General Baptist New Connexion Catechism on God' (both written in 1805), can be found in Protestant Nonconformist Texts Volume 3: The Nineteenth Century, edited by David Bebbington (University of Stirling, UK), Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2006. or: David W. Bebbington; Kenneth Dix; Alan Ruston (2015). Protestant Nonconformist Texts Volume 3: The Nineteenth Century. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4982-1917-4.
• William H. Brackney (2004). A Genetic History of Baptist Thought: With Special Reference to Baptists in Britain and North America. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ISBN 978-0-86554-913-5. pp. 105, 124, 147–149, 175, 233, 533, 536.
• Richard T. Pollard (2018). Dan Taylor (1738-1816), Baptist Leader and Pioneering Evangelical. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-5326-3619-6.
• W. Underwood (1870). The Life of the Rev. Dan Taylor. London: Simpkin, Marshall.

External links

• "Taylor, Dan" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.