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Baptists have historically held to what are known as the Baptist Distinctives. You can find them in the sticky on Baptists.
“Baptist” is not a denomination—it is a category of Christians. There are well over 200 Baptist “denominations” in North America alone. However, since each local Baptist church is autonomous, the word “denominations” is not a precisely accurate term for these subcategories, but is used for convenience. Each of these Baptist “denominations” was formed for its own purposes, as were the multitude of Christian denominations other than Baptist. Many of them were formed to send and support missionaries since individual churches were very often unable financially to do so alone. Others were formed to build and establish seminaries for the same reason. Others were formed to meet other needs. Denominations and their names are helpful in identifying the beliefs and practices of individual congregations—which is important when one desires to find a local congregation where one is likely to be theologically and governmentally comfortable.
Man has to accept God call of salvation. God's call isn't irresistible as the Calvinist say. We have a responsibility to either accept or reject the call. Salvation is pretty simple and yet both sides of the debate complicate the issue.
The doctrines that are known today as the “five points of Calvinism” were deduced and introduced into the Church by John Calvin and his cronies during the early years of the Reformation. In the churches where they were accepted, they replaced five fundamental biblical truths that were taught by the Fathers of the Church whom God had used to establish the New Testament Canon and the doctrine of the Trinity. These five fundamental biblical truths continued to be preached and taught through Christendom until they were supplanted in some churches by Calvinism. NONE of theses five fundamental biblical truths so much as hinted that we are saved by anything other than grace through faith. Theses five fundamental biblical truths are the very heart of Arminian theology. Our earliest Baptist churches were Arminian in their teaching, but today most Baptist churches teach one or more of the “five points of Calvinism.”
Since our Baptist churches teach that we are saved by grace through faith, the logical conclusion is that God gives us the grace to believe and accept the gospel, but some men, on their own strength, choose to reject the gospel. Logically, the alternative is that men are nothing but preprogrammed robots and the biblical history of man from his creation to the present is utterly false because there is no such thing as temptation, obedience, or sin.
But my statement was much more than just about Calvinism vs Arminian. But Arminians do tend to lean more on feelings, how the holy spirit is moving in them, or about how a portion of a verse touches them and speaks to them. This speaks nothing of what the beliefs stand for, except to show Arminians can follow mystical experiences. They ask "how does this verse speak to you?" or give you "5 steps to a better marriage" yet Scripture says nothing on these points.
