Book Description

Recycling the Past or Researching History? brings together an international group of Baptist scholars who explore various issues in Baptist historiography and myths. Contributors examine and re-examine areas of Baptist life and thought about which either little is known or the received wisdom is in need of revision. Historiographical studies include the date Oxford Baptists joined the Abingdon Association, the death of the Fifth Monarchist John Pendarves, eighteenth-century Calvinistic Baptists and the political realm, confessional identity and denominational institutions, Baptist community, ecclesiology, the priesthood of all believers, soteriology, Baptist spirituality, Strict and Reformed Baptists, the role of women among British Baptists, while various myths challenged include the nature of high-Calvinism in eighteenth-century England, baptismal anti-sacramentalism, episcopacy, and Baptists and change. The common theme tying these studies together is that research into Baptist history should deal with the primary sources and not, as has too often been the case, rely uncritically on the scholarship of previous generations.