York Place Baptist Church, Swansea was founded in 1830 as an evangelical group that left Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Swansea which itself was formed in 1825 by Bethesda Baptist Church as a mission to English-speaking immigrants to Swansea. Bethesda was the church that started life in 1649 at Ilston, the Gower, as the first Baptist Church in Wales. The founder, John Myles later emigrated to America where he founded Swansea Baptist Church in Massachusetts. In 1860 both Mount Pleasant and York Place were among the twelve English-speaking Churches that founded the first English-speaking Baptist Association in Wales.

The following is taken from: http://www.mercer.edu/baptiststudies/Bulletin/feb03ARC.htm

Baptist Firsts: Charles Deweese, Executive Director of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, writes this section of BSB. He identifies some of the “firsts” in Baptist life in America.

The Oldest Baptist Church Covenant in America

by Charles W. Deweese

A church covenant is a collection of written pledges based on the Bible. Church members voluntarily make these vows to God and one another. Such commitments relate primarily to conduct. While a confession of faith focuses on belief, a covenant deals with the ethics of church membership and personal behavior.

Thousands of covenants exist in the records of Baptist churches, associations, and conventions. The 1663 covenant of the Swansea Baptist Church in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, is the oldest extant Baptist covenant in America, although some earlier Baptists used covenants.

This covenant had a Welsh Baptist background. John Myles became pastor of a Baptist church at Ilston, Wales, near Swansea, in 1649. The 1662 Act of Uniformity forced him to abandon his pastorate, so he and others moved to Rehoboth, Massachusetts, where they founded the Swansea church in 1663 on the basis of a written covenant.

This covenant affirmed the duties of church membership. It immediately established a biblical basis for the congregation and its covenant: "it is our most bounden duty to walk in visible communion with Christ and each other according to the prescript rule of his most Holy Word."

This document presented an openness to diverse opinion, except at one critical point:

"As communion in Christ is the sole ground of our communion . . . so we are ready to . . . hold communion with all such by judgment of charity we conceive to be fellow-members with us in our Head, Christ Jesus, though differing from us in such controversial points as are not absolutely and essentially necessary to salvation."

The Swansea covenant represented a concept crucial to the formation of Baptist churches in colonial America: Church membership entails responsibilities. Perhaps we culturally conditioned Baptists of 2003 need to hear that message again.

Note: The complete Swansea covenant appears in Henry Melville King, Rev. John Myles and the Founding of the First Baptist Church in Massachusetts (Providence R.I.: Preston & Rounds Co., 1905), 52-55.