A person becomes a Southern Baptist by uniting with a church that is in friendly cooperation with the local Baptist Assciation, the state Baptist Convention, and/or the Southern Baptist Convention.  Typically church membership is a matter of accepting Jesus Christ as one's personal Savior and Lord and following in believer's baptism.  While our sole authority for faith and practice is the Bible, Southern Baptists have adopted a statement of generally held convictions called The Baptist Faith and Message. It serves as a guide to understanding who we are and what we believe. Copies are available at the WMBA office or the full text is available by clicking the link above. The following provides a brief, partial summary:

The Scriptures
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man.  It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction.  It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.

God
There is one and only one living and true God.  The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

God the Father
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace.  God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

God the Son
Christ is the eternal Son of God.  In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin.

God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine.  He exalts Christ.  He convicts of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.  He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.

Man
Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation.  By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race.  The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.

Salvation
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.

God's Purpose of Grace
Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners.  All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ and sanctified by His Spirit will never fall away from the state of grace but shall persevere to the end.

The Church
A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous, local body of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.  The New Testament speaks also of the church as the Body of Christ, which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

Baptism & the Lord's Supper
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water.  It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.

The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.

The Lord's Day
The first day of the week is the Lord's Day.  It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should include exercises of worship and spiritual devotion.

Last Things
God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end.  Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly and the dead will be raised; Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell. The righteous will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.

Evangelism & Missions
It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations, to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by verbal witness, undergirded by a Christian lifestyle, and by other methods in harmony with the gospel of Christ.

Stewardship
God is the source of all blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that we have and are we owe to Him. Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation to serve Him with their time, talents, and material possessions.

Cooperation
Christ's people should organize such associations and conventions as may best secure cooperation for the great objects of the Kingdom of God. Such organizations have no authority over one another or over the churches.  Cooperation is desirable between the various Christian denominations.

The Christian & the Social Order
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society.  In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism; every form of greed, selfishness, and vice; and all forms of sexual immorality.

Religious Liberty
Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends.  A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.

Family
God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society.  Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.  The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people.  Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.