Organized in the nineteenth century, the General Conference of German Baptists was primarily a North American denominational body that adopted the polity of the American Baptists to build religious communities of converts of German ethnic background. From 1851 to 1920, the General Conference of German Baptists resisted institutional unity with the larger English-speaking bodies. Instead, it developed an ethnic mission with the financial aid of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. With time the German church membership became more Americanized in language and habits. The external pressure to assimilate increased. Yet, the German Baptist leadership moved away from complete Americanization of the churches and sought to preserve the distinct Pietist theological basis and ethnic mission of the Conference. The General Conference of German Baptists embraced institutional independence beginning in 1920 with the dissolution of the Cooperative Agreement that bound the mission of the German Baptists, the ABHMS, and the Baptist Union of Western Canada.

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