First Baptist Church of Birmingham

First Baptist Church of Birmingham is a Southern Baptist congregation located at 2209 Lakeshore Drive.

In 1872, Jonathan Hillyer established First Baptist Church after a year of missionary activity. The church worshipped in 3 different facilities throughout their first 30 years. In 1905, the church completed a sanctuary at the intersection of 6th Avenue North and 22nd Street. Due to growth, the church built an education building nearby in the 1926, providing space for church ministry as well as office space for other companies. The first Baptist Book Store was located in this building as well. Throughout this time, many members of this congregation served in denominational life and in the community, including support for the Baptist Hospital Princeton.

The Civil Rights era greatly affected First Baptist Church. Throughout this time, the church became a growing commuter congregation as the neighborhood around the church changed. However, the church remained committed to ministering in their downtown location. As members had to face the issues of race, the church placed a toil on pastors who served it. In the Birmingham campaign of 1963, African-American visitors were welcomed by pastor Earl Stallings to the congregation, much to the ire of some segregationalists in the congregation. Stallings was one of the ministers to whom Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Community ministries led other African-American families to attend the church in the late 1960s. In 1970, one family applied for membership, leading to a sharp divide in the congregation. Herbert Gilmore, pastor of the church at this time, was very supportive of allowing these prospective members to join, even leading to a move to remove him as pastor. The division in the congregation, which also included issues of theology and personality, led Gilmore to leave the church to form the Baptist Church of the Covenant.

In 1984, First Baptist voted to move from downtown to a new facility on Lakeshore Drive, on the location of the President's Mansion at Samford University. They sold their property to AmSouth Bank, and it has since been demolished.

Pastors include:

• B.D. Gray
• A.J. Dickinson (1901-1918)
• James Randolph Hobbs (1918-1936)
• J.T. Ford
• Earl Stallings (1961-1965)
• Herbert Gilmore (1968-1970)
• Andrew Tamping
• Samuel R. Jones, Jr.
• Tom Caradine
• Anton Fourie
• Stan Lewis

Prominent members included:

• Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

References

• Bass, Jonathan. "Blessed are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the ""Letter from Birmingham Jail" Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
• Flynt, Wayne. Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.