Серия "Monographs in Baptist History"

Historians have painted a picture of nineteenth-century Baptists huddled in clapboard meetinghouses preaching sermons and singing hymns, seemingly unaware of the wider world. According to this view, Baptists were «so heavenly-minded, they were of no earthly good.» Overlooked are the illustrative stories of Baptists fighting poverty, promoting abolition, petitioning Congress, and debating tax policy. Politics and Piety is a careful look at antebellum Baptist life. It is seen in figures such as...

Baptists are not often thought of as leading theologians and practitioners of worship. But forgotten in history is one crucial fact: the Baptist tradition formed out of a desire to worship God purely. Early Baptists devoted immense energy to questions of worship and drew conclusions of even contemporary value. Through the seismic liturgical shifts of English society in the seventeenth century, worship was both their most galvanizing and disintegrating impulse. As time passed and terminology...

This book explores the doctrine of the church among English Calvinistic Baptists between 1640 and 1660. It examines the emergence of Calvinistic Baptists against the background of the demise of the Episcopal Church of England, the establishment by Act of Parliament of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and the attempted foundation of a Presbyterian Church of England. Ecclesiology was one of the most important doctrines under consideration in this phase of English history, and this book is a...

This Festschrift for historian Gerald L. Priest, who served the Lord Jesus and the church for over twenty years at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, contains six articles that touch on historical subjects dear to Dr. Priest's heart. The first three articles deal with aspects of the life and ministries of Jonathan Edwards and Andrew Fuller, both remarkable eighteenth-century theologians whose thought has had a profound impact down to the present day, along with eighteenth-century Baptist...

Adoniram Judson was not only a historic figurehead in the first wave of foreign missionaries from the United States and a hero in his own day, but his story still wins the admiration of Christians even today. Though numerous biographies have been written to retell his life story in every ensuing generation, until now no single volume has sought to comprehensively synthesize and analyze the features of his theology and spiritual life. His vision of spirituality and religion certainly contained...

Hanserd Knollys (1609-91) was a godly pastor/leader and prolific writer among the early Calvinistic Baptists of the seventeenth century. His life and ministry demonstrated a heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Despite imprisonment and persecution, he preached the gospel continuously and asked nonbelievers to «open the door» of their hearts to Christ. As for believers, he exhorted them to worship God «in spirit and truth,» live holy lives in both «the form and power of godliness,» and prepare...

The basic question, «Where did Baptists come from and why?» has two camps that offer differing explanations: (1) the English Separatist camp produced the ministries of foundational Baptists, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, thus takes credit for Baptist origins, and (2) the Anabaptist movement is the alternative camp, understanding either a direct connection via lineage back to the infamous Swiss Brethren or an indirect connection via Anabaptist teachings. Anabaptist ecclesiology is very much akin,...

The English Baptist Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) is well-known today for his nuanced Evangelical answer to the «Modern Question» against hyper-Calvinism, founding and leading the Baptist Missionary Society, and his exemplary pastoral ministry. In his day, however, he was also esteemed as a formidable apologist for Christian orthodoxy, especially in the area of moral reasoning. Following in the footsteps of his theological mentor, Jonathan Edwards, Fuller labored to defend the moral goodness and...

Dan Taylor was a leading English eighteenth-century General Baptist minister and founder of the New Connexion of General Baptists–a revival movement. This book provides considerable new light on the theological thinking of this important evangelical figure. The major themes examined are Taylor's spiritual formation; soteriology; understanding of the atonement; beliefs regarding the means and process of conversion; ecclesiology; approach to baptism, the Lord's Supper, and worship; and...

Hanserd Knollys was an important and leading figure of the early Calvinistic Baptist movement in Great Britain in the seventeenth century. His spiritual and pastoral journey began with the Church of England, followed by a brief time in Congregationalism, and finally landing with the Particular Baptists. Knollys was an educated Baptist clergyman, having graduated from Cambridge University, who published over twenty-five works in his lifetime. Zealous for the Lord, previously published by Barry...

American Baptists emerged from the Civil War as a divided group. Slavery, landmarkism, and other issues sundered Baptists into regional clusters who held more or less to the same larger doctrinal sentiments. As the century progressed, influences from Europe further altered the landscape. A new way to view the Bible–more human, less divine–began to shape Baptist thought. Moreover, Darwinian evolutionism altered the way religion was studied. Religion, like humanity itself, was progressing....

This is the first critical study of the writings of the English Particular Baptist Benjamin Beddome (1718-1795), whose evangelical ministry stretched over the last half of the eighteenth century. Best known in the years following his death as a capable hymn writer, he was also a significant doctrinal preacher. John Newton, who had heard such preachers as John Wesley and George Whitefield, considered Beddome one of the finest preachers of his day. The articles in this critical study examine his...

Waiting on the Spirit of Promise is a study of the life and ministry of Abraham Cheare (1626-1668), containing selections from Cheare's works, and rescuing an important seventeenth-century Baptist from obscurity. Cheare has been overshadowed by other more celebrated Baptist contemporaries, but as the pastor of the Particular Baptist work in Plymouth, Devon, Cheare played a key role in the advance of the Baptist cause in the West Country in the 1650s. His Sighs for Sion is an excellent...