Editing Baptists (section)

==Membership==
{{multiple image
| direction         = vertical
| width             = 220
| image1            = Église Baptiste le Rocher Lomé culte.jpg
| caption1          = [[Worship service (evangelicalism)|Worship service]] at The Rock Baptist Church of [[Lomé]], member of the [[Togo Baptist Convention]]
| image2            = Crossway Church service.jpg
| caption2          = [[Worship service (evangelicalism)|Worship service]] at [[Crossway Baptist Church]] in [[Melbourne]], affiliated with [[Australian Baptist Ministries]], 2008
| image3            = KABA 2.jpg
| caption3          = [[Worship service (evangelicalism)|Worship service]] at [[Kohima Ao Baptist Church]] in [[Kohima]], affiliated with the [[Nagaland Baptist Church Council]] (India), 2019
}}

Membership policies vary due to the autonomy of churches, but generally an individual becomes a member of a church through believer's baptism (which is a public [[profession of faith]] in Jesus, followed by immersion baptism).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pendleton |first=James Madison |author-link=James Madison Pendleton |url=http://www.reformedreader.org/rbb/pendleton/churchmanual/bcm01.htm |title=Church Manual For Baptist Churches |publisher=The Judson Press |year=1867}}</ref> Most Baptists do not believe that baptism is a requirement for salvation but rather a public expression of inner repentance and faith.<ref name="Brackney" /> In general, Baptist churches do not have a stated age restriction on membership, but believer's baptism requires that an individual be able to freely and earnestly profess their faith.<ref>{{cite web |title=Baptist Faith and Mission |url=http://www.sbc.net/bfm/ |access-date=8 November 2011 |publisher=Southern Baptist Convention}}</ref>

In 2010, an estimated 100 million Christians identified as Baptist or belonging to a Baptist-type church.<ref>J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann, ''Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices'', ABC-CLIO, USA, 2010, p.299</ref> In 2020, according to the researcher [[Sébastien Fath]] of the [[French National Centre for Scientific Research|CNRS]], the Baptist movement has around 170 million believers in the world.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-07-28 |title=Qui sont les baptistes ? |url=https://www.reforme.net/religion/protestantisme/2020/07/28/qui-sont-les-baptistes/ |access-date=2023-05-09 |website=Réforme|first1=Louis|last1=Fraysse|language=fr-FR}}</ref> According to a census released in 2024, the BWA includes 266 participating fellowships in 134 countries, with 178,000 churches and 51 million baptized members.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=Member Unions {{!}} Baptist World Alliance |url=https://baptistworld.org/member-unions/ |access-date=2024-09-09 |website=baptistworld.org |language=English}}</ref> These statistics may not be fully representative, however, since some churches in the United States have dual or triple national Baptist affiliation, causing a church and its members to be counted possibly by more than one Baptist association, if these associations are members of the BWA.<ref> Robert E. Johnson, ''A Global Introduction to Baptist Churches'', Cambridge University Press, UK, 2010, p. 361</ref><ref> Paul Finkelman, Cary D. Wintz, ''Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century Five-volume Set'', Oxford University Press, US, 2009, p. 193</ref>

Among the censuses carried out by individual Baptist associations in 2023, those which claimed the most members on each continent were:
{{table alignment}}
{|class="wikitable col3right"
!Region!!Name!!Churches!!Members!!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=2|[[North America]]|| [[Southern Baptist Convention]]||style="text-align:right"|46,876||style="text-align:right"| 12,722,266||<ref> Aaron Earls, [https://research.lifeway.com/2025/04/30/southern-baptists-membership-decline-continues-amid-other-areas-of-growth/ Southern Baptists’ Membership Decline Continues Amid Other Areas of Growth], research.lifeway.com, April 30, 2025</ref>
|- 
|[[National Baptist Convention, USA]]|| style="text-align:right"|21,145 ||8,415,100||<ref name=":0" />
|-
| rowspan=2|[[South America]]|| [[Brazilian Baptist Convention]]||9,288||style="text-align:right"|1,809,230||
|-
|[[Evangelical Baptist Convention of Argentina]] ||style="text-align:right"| 1,216||85,000||<ref name=":0" />
|-
| rowspan=3|[[Africa]]||[[Nigerian Baptist Convention]] ||14,523 ||style="text-align:right"| 8,925,000||
|-
| [[Baptist Convention of Tanzania]] ||style="text-align:right"|1,391||2,690,730||
|-
| [[Baptist Community of the Congo River]]||style="text-align:right"|2,685||1,765,836||<ref name=":0" />
|-
| rowspan=3|[[Asia]]||[[Myanmar Baptist Convention]]||5,337||style="text-align:right"|1,013,499||
|-
| [[Nagaland Baptist Church Council]]||style="text-align:right"| 1,724 || 716,495 ||
|-
| [[Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches]]||style="text-align:right"| 1,079|| 600,000||<ref name=":0" />
|-
|rowspan=3|[[Europe]]||  [[All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists]] ||2,192||style="text-align:right"|105,189||<ref name=":0" /> 
|-
|[[Baptist Union of Great Britain]]||style="text-align:right"|1,875||100,103
|-
| [[Union of Christian Baptist Churches in Romania]]||style="text-align:right"|1,697||83,853||<ref name=":0" />
|-
|rowspan=2|[[Oceania]]||[[Baptist Union of Papua New Guinea]]||493||style="text-align:right"|84,700||
|-
|[[Australian Baptist Ministries]]||style="text-align:right"|1,029||78,416||<ref name=":0" />
|}