Adelaide Place Baptist Church

Adelaide Place Baptist Church is a Scottish Baptist church in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow. The name "Adelaide Place" is taken from the former name of this part of Bath Street. The church was founded in 1829 and the present church building dates from 1877. The church played an important place in the history of the Baptist churches in Scotland, and also spearheaded many charitable and social care initiatives. It is affiliated with the Baptist Union of Scotland.

Reverend James Paterson DD, the first pastor, started the church in a rented room on North Portland Street, Glasgow in 1829. Due to the growth of the congregation, the church moved to a large hall in Inkle Factory Lane, and then in 1835 to a church building they had commissioned on Hope Street, Glasgow. The Hope Street building is now part of Glasgow Central Station. The church then commissioned a new building on Adelaide Place (now part of Bath Street) in the 1870s. The congregation moved into the new building in 1876. Another branch of the church was established in the early 1880s on St Clair Street, Maryhill.

While still in Hope Street, the church provided evening classes in elementary education. These classes were gradually phased out with the introduction of a compulsory public education system in Scotland. Dr. Paterson was one of the founders of the Glasgow Commercial College in 1846. The college aimed to provide a university-level commercial education to young businessmen. Paterson himself taught Logic and Rhetoric and the college also taught Political Economy and other subjects. It met in the Anderson Buildings on George Street, Glasgow. The college later merged with the Glasgow Athenaeum, which was the ancestor of the University of Strathclyde. The Baptist Theological College was founded in 1894, and until 1925 it was housed within Adelaide Place Baptist Church. The first president was Professor Joseph Coats MD who was a deacon of Adelaide Place for many years. Three early pastors of the church also served as tutors at the college: Dr. James Paterson, Dr. James Culross and Dr. T. H. Martin. More recently, Jack Quinn (pastor from 1984 to 2013) tutored at the college.

In 1870, the Baptist Union of Scotland was formed of 51 churches in the hall of Hope Street Chapel (which later moved to Adelaide Place). Howard Bowser, a former deacon and treasurer of Hope Street Chapel, became president of the Baptist Union in 1871 and the philanthropist Thomas Coats (1809–1883) took over the presidency in 1873. Adelaide Place was for many years the centre of denomination activity for Baptists in Scotland, with the annual Baptist Assembly often being held on the premises. Because of this role, and the fact that APBC founded many daughter churches, it was described by the Evening Citizen newspaper as "the Cathedral Church of the Baptists in the West of Scotland."

Twenty men from Adelaide Place and a further 17 from the St. Clair Street branch (near Maryhill Road) were killed in the First World War. Six men from Adelaide Place were killed in the Second World War. The names of the fallen from both wars are inscribed on a commemorative communion table. The St Clair Street Women's Fellowship started two sewing meetings to make up comfort packages for church members on active service. Some female members of the congregation volunteered to help with air raid precautions, and Marjorie McInnes regularly carried out fire-watch duties from the church roof during blackout. During the war, the main church building was open to the public every day for meditation and prayer. The BBC broadcast to the Empire a radio programme of a church service held in Adelaide Place on 9 March 1941. In 1933, £2,500 was raised to carry out repairs to the stonework of the church, which had been damaged by smo

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