The Seventh Day Baptist Church traces its origins to the 17th century in England. With a renewed emphasis on the Scriptures, seeking to follow the teachings of God's Word, James Ockford, William Saller, Peter Chamberlain, Francis Bampfield, Edward, and Joseph Stennett concluded that observing the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship was an essential requirement of biblical Christianity. Initially, they remained united within the Baptist Church, sharing convictions but practicing Sabbath observance in private. However, once the State imposed a common day of worship, Sunday, separation became inevitable.
The first Seventh Day Baptist Church to observe the Sabbath began meeting between 1653-54 in the city of London, England, and was named Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church. This church was led by Dr. Peter Chamberlain, personal physician to both King Charles I and his son, King Charles II. The inscription on his tombstone states that he died in 1683 and had been a Christian who kept God's commandments, faith in Jesus, and observed the Sabbath for over 32 years.
Seventh Day Baptists did not grow significantly in England, but they gained many followers in North America and Germany. In North America, Bible study led Samuel and Tacy Hubbard to embrace the Baptist principle of baptism by immersion, becoming members of the First Baptist Church of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1647. In 1665, their family and several others became convinced of observing the Sabbath as the "holy day of the Lord" and joined in covenant with Stephen Mumford and his wife Anne, who had learned about the Sabbath while members of a Baptist Church in Tewksbury, England. When Samuel and Tacy publicly declared their convictions about the Sabbath, the other members found it difficult to maintain communion with them within the First Baptist Church of Newport. Thus, five members joined the Mumford family, founding the first Seventh Day Baptist Church in North America on December 23, 1671. A similar separation occurred in 1705 in Piscataway, New Jersey, when a Baptist deacon, Edmund Dunham, became convinced of the biblical basis for Sabbath observance. Dunham and sixteen other members withdrew to form their own church. A third group of churches came out of the Quakers in the Philadelphia region around 1700. Today, the Seventh Day Baptist Church officially has a presence in 21 countries across all continents.
