Global Baptist Identity

Paternoster Press has a great series on Baptist History and Thought whose volumes I will include below. But Paternoster is being bought out due to the global economic crisis. It is being bought by an Australian company (Koorong Booksellers). The Baptist History and Heritage Centre @ Regent’s Park College, Oxford University is  starting a new series, Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies.  I will link to those as they appear.   It does appear that Wipf and Stock have reprinted several volumes in the series.   Below is the series to date.

Studies in Baptist History and Thought

Series Editors(at Paternoster): 

Anthony R. Cross, Director, Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent’s Park College, Oxford University, Oxfordshire, UK.

Curtis Freeman, Research Professor of Theology and Director, Baptist House of Studies, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC, USA.

Stephen R. Holmes, Senior Lecturer in Theology, St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews Fife, Scotland.

Elizabeth Newman, Professor of Theology and Ethics, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA.

Philip E. Thompson, Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Heritage, Sioux Falls Seminary, Sioux Falls, SD, USA.

Series Consultant Editors:

David Bebbington, Lecturer in History, University of Stirling, Stirling Fife, Scotland, UK.

Paul S. Fiddes, Director of Research, Regent’s Park College & Professor of Systematic Theology, Oxford University, Oxfordshire, England, UK.

Stanley Grenz (Deceased), Lately Pioneer MacDonald Professor of Theology and Baptist Heritage, Carey Theological College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Ken R. Manley. Formerly, Distinguished Professor of Church History, Whitley College, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. (Manley is no longer with Whitley and I haven’t been able to track him down. I hope he hasn’t died.)

Stanley E. Porter, President and Professor of New Testament, McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.

The editors of this series need to be more international and multi-cultural.

Manley, Ken R., From Woolloomooloo to ‘Eternity’: A History of Australian Baptists. Vol.1: Growing an Australian Church (1831-1913). Vol. 2: A National Church in a Global Community (1914-2005).  Two Vols. in One Repr. Wipf & Stock, 2006.  Focuses more on the social and theological developments of the Australian Baptists than on institutional matters, though the latter are included.

Ian Randall, Toivo Pilli, and Anthony Cross, eds., Baptist Identities: International Studies from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries. Paternoster, 2007.  This is an excellent volume especially on Eastern Europen Baptists.

Michael A. G. Hayken, ed., “At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word”: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Anthony R. Cross, Baptism and the Baptists: Theology and Practice in Twentieth Century Britain.  Paternoster, 2004.

Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson, eds., Baptist Sacramentalism.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson, eds. Baptist Sacramentalism 2.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2009.

Peter Naylor, Calvinism, Communion, and the Baptists: A Study of English Calvinistic Baptists from the Late 1600s to the Early 1800s.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Ian Randall and Anthony R. Cross, Baptists and Mission:  Papers from the Fourth Annual International Conference on Baptist Studies.  Wipf and Stock, 2008. 

Karen Smith, The Community and the Believers: A Study of Calvinistic Baptist Spirituality in Some Towns and Villages of Hampshire and the Borders of Wiltshire, c. 1730-1830. Paternoster, 2004.

James M. Renihan, Edification and Beauty: The Practical Ecclesiology of English Particular Baptists, 1675-1705.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2009.

D. W. Bebbington, ed., The Gospel in the World: International Baptist Studies. Paternoster, 2004.

Peter Shepherd. The Making of a Modern Denomination. (Influence of J. H. Shakespeare on the Baptist Union of Great Britain.) Paternoster, 2006.

Stanley K. Fowler, More Than a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal Sacramentalism.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Peter J. Morden, Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) and the Revival of Eighteenth Century Particular Baptist Life. Paternoster, 2006.

Philip E. Thompson and Anthony R. Cross, eds., Recycling the Past or Researching History: Studies in Baptist Historiography and Myths.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.  This is an extraordinarily necessary volume–but likely to be very controversial. I can tell you from experience that Baptists do NOT like to have people debunk their myths–and both conservative and liberal Baptists have them.

Ken R. Manley, Redeeming Love Proclaim: John Rippon and the Baptists.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Brian R. Talbot, The Search for a Common Identity: The Origins of the Baptist Union of Scotland, 1800-1870.  Paternoster, 2005.

Paul Fiddes, Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Steven R. Harmon, Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision.

Linda Wilson, Marianne Farningham: A Plain Woman Worker.  Repr.  Wipf and Stock, 2008.

Dennis Bustin, Paradox and Perseverence: Hanserd Knollys, Particular Baptist Pioneer in Seventeenth Century England.  Repr. Wipf and Stock, 2006.

Frank W. Rinaldi, The Tribe of Dan:  The New Connexion General Baptists, 1770-1891:  From Revival Movement to Established Denomination.  Wipf and Stock, 2009.

Cynthia Y. Aalders.  To Express the Ineffable:  The Hymns and Spirituality of Anne Steele.  Wipf and Stock, 2009.

John H. Y. Briggs, ed.  A Dictionary of European Baptist Life and Thought.  Wipf and Stock, 2009.

Keith G. Jones and Ian M. Randall, eds., Counter-Cultural Communities:  Baptistic Life in Twentieth Century Europe.  Wipf and Stock, 2008.

Toivo Pilli, Dance or Die:  The Shaping of Estonian Baptist Life Under Communism.  Wipf and Stock, 2009.

 The next section of this page is devoted to an excellent series by Mercer University Press.

Baptists:  History, Theology, Literature, Hymns

General Editor, Walter B. Shurden, Calloway Professor of Christianity & Executive Director of the Center for Baptist Studies, Mercer University, Macon, GA, USA.  An excellent series, but not enough cultural diversity.  There need to be far more works by and on African-American Baptist life, plus works from around the world. Baptists are a global people and we need to begin thinking that way. Ironically, Mercer UP has published many important works by and about Black Baptists, but in their “African American Studies” series and not this series. Thus segregated, African-American Baptists are subtly discounted in the forging of “Baptist identity” in the minds of white Baptists, something I doubt the editors of this series noticed, much less did consciously.

• William H. Brackney, A Genetic History of Baptist Thought:  With Special Reference to Baptists in Britain and North America.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2004.  One of the best studies of its kind. It includes African-American theologians usually overlooked in such studies. “North America” in this work includes only Canada and the U.S., not Mexico, Cuba, or Puerto Rico, which is a real weakness. Needs a sequel looking outside the English speaking North Atlantic since there are now as many Baptists in Brazil as in Texas and more in Nagaland, India than in England or New England –sites of historic beginnings.
• William E. Ellis, A Man of Books and a Man of the People:  E. Y. Mullins and the Crisis of Moderate Southern Baptist Leadership.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985.
• Anthony L. Chute, A Piety Above the Common Standard: Jesse Mercer and the Defense of Evangelistic Calvinism.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2004.
• Henlee H. Barnette, A Pilgrimage of Faith: My Story.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2004.
•  Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity(1611/1612). Classics of Religious Liberty.  Ed. and Intro. by Richard Groves. Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 1998.  Richard Groves gave a great gift to the contemporary student of religious liberty or Baptist beginnings–rendering Helwys’ words into modern English spelling and punctuation.  Belongs on the shelf of all serious Baptists.
• Jarrett Burch, Adiel Sherwood:  Baptist Antebellum Pioneer in Georgia.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
• Timothy Dwight Whelan, ed., Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2009.
• James Leo Garrett, Baptist Theology: A Four Century Study. Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2009. Garrett taught church history and historical theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth.  This is a complementary study to Brackney’s.   Brackney traces many strands of Baptist thought over centuries, but Brackney weaves them together in synthesis.
• John Taylor, Baptists on the American Frontier:  A History of  Ten Baptist Churches of Which the Author has been Alternatively a Member, edited and introduced by Chester Raymond Young.  Annotated Third Edition.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 1996.  This was a firsthand 19th C. account that is now edited and reprinted for today. An excellent snapshot of 19th C. Baptist life on the American frontier.
• James P. Byrd, The Challenges of Roger Williams:  Religious Liberty, Violent Persecution, and the Bible.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002.
• J. Brent Walker, Church-State Matters:  Fighting for Religious Liberty in Our Nation’s Capital.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008.  Walker is a seminary-educated and ordained Baptist minister as well as a practicing attorney and Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty–where for 20 years he has fought for religious liberty and church-state separation.
• William H. Brackney, Congregation and Campus:  North American Baptists in Higher Education.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.  This is a long-overdue study of the experience of U.S. and Canadian Baptists in higher education from 1756 until today, including our successes and failures and arguments about the future of “faith-based” higher education.
• Pamela R. Durso and Keith E. Durso, eds., Courage and Hope: The Stories of Ten Baptist Women Ministers.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2005.
• Marc A. Jolley and John D. Pierce, eds., Distinctively Baptist:  Essays on Baptist History:  A Festschrift for Walter B. Shurden.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005. The contributors read like a Who’s Who of Baptist historians:  William L. Blevins, Bill J. Leonard, E. Glenn Hinson, Edwin Gaustad, William Brackney, Charles W. Deweese, Douglas Weaver, Glenn Jonas, Karen Smith, Merrill M. Hawkins, Jr., Robert N. Nash, Jr., Wm. Loyd Allen, Pam Durso, Carolyn DeArmond Blevins, William Hull, Edmond L. Rowell, Jr., John D. Pierce, and Marc A. Jolley.
• Francis Wayland and Richard Fuller, Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution, ed., Nathan A. Finn and Keith Harper. Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.  Originally published in a Baptist newspaper in Boston in the 19th C., this was a debate between a Northern Baptist educator (Wayland was President of Brown University) and moderate abolitionist and a Southern pastor and defender of slavery.  By editing and republishing this antebellum debate, Finn and Harper help us see how 19th C. Baptists dealt with the greatest moral challenge of their day and see the forces which led to the division of Baptists North and South prior to the division of the country and Civil War. The roots of the way Baptists have risen to other challenges–or failed to do so–can be seen here as well.
• David W. Music and Paul A. Richardson, I Will Sing the Wondrous Story:  A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.  What a congregation or individual sings shapes their actual, living, theology. Hymnwriters and those who edit and publish hymnals are the most influential theologians–especially in a denominational tradition that has downplayed creeds and confessions (even when Baptists have had confessions, they have almost never been repeated in worship)  and in which many, if not most, members will never have read any formal works in theology.
• C. Douglas Weaver, In Search of the New Testament Church:  The Baptist Story.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.  Baptists have been one of the most diverse denominations, but throughout our 400 years, Doug Weaver finds a persistent theme:  The attempt to recreate “New Testament Christianity” in contemporary churches.  He sees this not only in the insistence on believers’ baptism, but in the way Seventh Day Baptists insist on Saturday worship and Sabbath observance; the fundamentalist  insistence on “fundamentals of the faith” (denial of doctrinal development); the “nine rites” of Colonial era Separate Baptists; the women preachers of Free Will Baptist life (ironically, today’s Free Will Baptists are strongly sexist); the “trail of blood” of Landmark successionism; the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch; and the ministry of European Baptist pioneer Johann Oncken.  I think Weaver is right and would add others:  the prophetic liberation theology of Black Baptists; the strong insistence on religious liberty and church-state separation of Roger Williams and others; the zeal of Garrison and other Baptist abolitionists who wanted “neither bond nor free;” the Sermon on the Mount orientation of Clarence Jordan groups like the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.  There is a primitivist or restorationist streak in Baptists as different as the liberal Shailer Matthews and the fundamentalist Curtis Lee Laws!
• Keith Durso, No Armor for the Back:  Baptist Prison Writings, 1600s-1700s.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2007.
• James A. Rogers, Richard Furman:  Life and Legacy.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2001.  Biographical study of a major antebellum Baptist leader in the South–after whom Furman University of Greenville, SC is named.
• Joann Ford Watson, editor and compiler, Selected Spiritual Writings of Anne Dutton:  Eighteenth-Century, British-Baptist, Woman Theologian.  6 Volumes. Vol. 1: Letters (Mercer UP, 2003); Vol. 2: Discourses, Poetry, Hymns, Memoir (Mercer UP, 2004); Vol. 3: Autobiography (Mercer UP, 2006); Vol. 4: Theological Works (Mercer UP, 2007); Vol. 5: Miscellaneous Correspondence (Mercer UP, 2008); Vol. 6: Various vMercer UP, 2009).
• Keith Harper, ed., Send the Light:  Lottie Moon’s Letters and Other Writings.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2001.  Lottie Moon, Southern Baptist missionary to China in the 19th C., is possibly the most influential woman on Baptists in the American South.
• E. Y. Mullins, The Axioms of Religion, ed. C. Douglas Weaver. Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2001.  Originally published in 1908 as an apologetic for Christianity and, especially, it’s Baptist form. Mullins was the most influential Baptist theologian of the first half of the 20th C. and this was his most influential work. Many suggest that it took Baptist life and faith in a more individualistic direction than previously.
• W. Glenn Jonas, Jr., ed., The Baptist River:  Essays on Many Tributaries of a Diverse Tradition.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.
• Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenant of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, ed. Richard Groves. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002.
• George H. Tooze, ed. The Life and Letters of Emily Chubbock Judson: Vol. 1: Biographies and Timelines (Mercer UP, 2009); Vol. 2: 1846-1847 (Mercer UP, 2010); Vol. 3: January 1848-September 1851 (Mercer UP, 2010).  Pioneer Baptist missionary Adonirom Judson (1788-1850) was widowed twice and married three times. Each of the “Mrs. Judson’s” made major contributions of their own, but the only one widely remembered today is Ann Hasseltine Judson (1789-1826), his first wife, whose letters back to America helped create a passion among North American Baptists for missions.  Emily Chubbock was the third “Mrs. Judson” and wrote the biography of the second, Sarah Hall Boardman Judson (1803-1845). But she was an accomplished literary person in her own right and Tooze works to recover her from the shadows of both Judson and his two previous amazing wives.  There will be 6 volumes when the project is complete.
• Roger Ward and David P. Gushee, eds., The Scholarly Vocation and the Baptist Academy:  Essays on the Future of Baptist Higher Education. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008.  Essays by Thomas Kidd, Adam English, Stephen Chapman, Chad Eggleston, Doug Henry, Barry Harvey, Elizabeth Newman, Roger Ward, Scott H. Moore, David Gushee, and Paul Fiddes. Sadly, there are no representatives from African-American or Latino/a Baptist institutions, much less from outside the English speaking North Atlantic world.
• Timothy George and Eric F. Mason, eds., Theology in the Service of the Church:  Essays Presented to Fisher H. Humphreys. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008.
• Keith Durso, Thy Will Be Done:  A Biography of George W. Truett.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009.  The first full biography of the legendary Texas Baptist pastor, advocate of theological education, cooperation for missions, and stalwart defender of religious liberty and church-state separation.
• Michael E. Williams, Sr. and Walter B. Shurden, eds., Turning Poins in Baptist History:  A Festschrift in Honor of Harry Leon McBeth. Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.
• Twentieth-Century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics, ed., Larry L. McSwain with W. Loyd Allen, Historical Consultant.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2008.  Though I quibble with some presentations at points (and on selection of figures), this is the best work of its kind ever produced.
• James H. Slatton, W. H. Whitsitt:  The Man and the Controversy.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009.  Whitsitt, 6th elected professor and 3rd president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), was a church historian forced by Landmarkers to resign for telling the truth:  that Baptists did not go in an unbroken line (“trail of blood”) of dissenters back to Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan, nor was the first church in Acts the “First Baptist Church of Jerusalem in all but name” as Landmarkers strongly believed.  Whitsitt used documentary evidence to show that Baptists originated in the 17th C. and that even Roger Williams may not have been baptized by immersion.  This is the first full length study of this church historian who was forced to leave his beloved seminary and teach philosophy at the University of Richmond.
• Michael Lee Ruffin, ed., Why Be a Christian? The Sermons of Howard P. Giddens.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 201o.
• Charles W. Deweese.  Women Deacons and Deaconesses: 400 Years of Baptist Service.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2005. 

 Related Works from Various Publishers

Ballew, Christopher Brent and Moses Baker. The Impact of African-American Antecedents on the Baptist Foreign Missionary Movement, 1782-1825.  Toronto Studies in Theology.  Edwin Mellen Press, 2004.

 Bell, Mark R.  Apocalypse How? Baptist Movements During the English Revolution.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000.

Bellinger, Elizabeth Smith.  A Costly Obedience:  Sermons by Women of Steadfast Spirit.  Valley Forge, PA:  Judson Press, 1994.

Brackney, William H.  Baptists in North America:  An Historical Perspective.  Religious Life in America Series.  Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Brackney, William H. The Baptists.  Denominations in America.  Westport, CT:  Praeger Publishers, 1994.

Brackney, William H.  Historical Dictionary of the Baptists.  Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements.  Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009. 

Brackney, William H., ed. Bridging Cultures and Hemisphere: The Legacy of Archibald Reekie and Canadian Baptists in Bolivia.  Macon, GA:  Smyth & Helwys Press, 1997.

Carro, Daniel and Richard F. Wilson, eds.  Contemporary Gospel Accents:  Doing Theology in Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996.  Sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance, this collections is a window on Baptist theologizing outside Europe and North America.

Carter, Lawrence.  Walking Integrity:  Benjamin Elijah Mays:  Mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 1997.

Dumas, Carrie M. and Julie Hunter.  Benjamin Elijah Mays: A Pictorial Life and Times.  Voices of the African Diaspora Series.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2006.

Durso, Pamela R. and Keith E. Durso.  The Story of Baptists in the United States.  Macon, GA:  Smyth and Helwys Press, 2005.

Freeman, Curtis W., James Wm. McClendon, Jr., and Rosalee Vellosa de Silva, eds.  Baptist Roots:  A Reader in the Theology of a Christian People.  Valley Forge, PA:  Judson Press, 1999.  Better than most similar sourcebooks in selecting women’s voices and people from diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives.  There are still some idiosyncratic selections and omissions.

Harper, Keith, ed.  Rescue the Perishing:  Selected Correspondence of Annie W. Armstrong.  Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2006

Hayes, Kathleen.  Women on the Threshold:  Voices of Salvadoran Baptist Women. Macon, GA:  Smyth & Helwys, 1996.

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks.  Righteous Discontent:  The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1993.

Hunt, Rosalie Hall.  Bless God and Take Courage:  The Judson History and Legacy.  Valley Forge, PA:  Judson Press, 2000.

Lee, Jason K.  The Theology of John Smyth:  Puritn, Separatist, Baptist, Mennonite.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.

Pierard, Richard, ed. Baptists Together in Christ, 1905-2005.  Birmingham, AL:  Samford University Press, 2005.  A History of the Baptist World Alliance.

Pugh, Alfred Lane.  Pioneer Preachers in Paradise:  The Legacies of George Liele, Prince Williams, and Thomas Paul in Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Haiti.  Valley Forge, PA:  Judson Press, 2000. 

Stricklin, David.  A Genealogy of Dissent:  Southern Baptist Protest in the Twentieth Century.  Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

 

 

 

Advertisement