The word baptist is used to designate denominational organizations, affiliations, associations, hospitals, individual churches, and Christian believers. But baptist is not an organization or a hierarchy or a name that goes on a sign. Baptist is a belief. It is a belief that people who have become believers in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord ought to be immersed in water as a sign of what happened to them by the grace of God. We do not baptize ourselves, just as we can not save ourselves. We do not baptize unbelievers, no matter how innocent.
Baptist is also an epithet. The first to have the name of Baptist was John the Baptist. He baptized our Lord Jesus Christ and was the first martyr of the New Testament. Many of the Christian martyrs for the last 2000 years had similar convictions to baptists of today concerning the proper application of baptism. The first Christians who were killed by other Christians were anabaptists, or rebaptizers, in North Africa. They had insisted that the Christians who turned in their brethren to the Romans not be restored to fellowship until they were baptized by ministers who were not traitors of the faith. That was in the second and third century, and there were baptists in every century that have offered up their lives for the Lord, and over the issue of baptism.
Who is a baptist? I am!
There is no “worship” that is acceptable to God that does not remind Him of His Son. Baptism qualifies by showing the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection.