Peninsula Enterprise

Southern Baptist Convention.

Beginning yesterday the Southern Baptist Convention will hold its thirty-eighth annual session in the Sam Jones Tabernacle, Nashville, Tenn. The territory embraced in this large organization includes the fourteen States of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and the District of Columbia and Indian Territory. It represents a population of 21,472,072 and an aggregate membership of 2,462,902, nearly half of whom are colored people, distributed among 16,654 churches. These churches hold property valued at $14,703,808 and educational property worth half as much. Last year they raised for Home Missions $48,971.19, and for Foreign Missions $113,325.90. The work is performed through the medium of three boards—the Foreign Mission Board, located at Richmond, Va., the Home Mission Board, at Atlanta, and the Sunday School Board, now in its second year, whose headquarters are in Nashville. The Woman's Missionary Union also operates in connection with the convention, and its leading educational institution is the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, at Louisville.

This session will be notable by reason of the report of the committee appointed at the last convention to raise a permanent centennial fund of $250,000 in celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of Foreign Missions by William Carey.