'For anyone who enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy or Educated, Unfollow is an essential text' - Louis Theroux 'Such a moving, redemptive, clear-eyed account of religious indoctrination' - Pandora Sykes 'A nuanced portrait of the lure and pain of zealotry' New York Times 'Unfolds like a suspense novel . . . A brave, unsettling, and fascinating memoir about the damage done by religious fundamentalism' NPR A Radio Four Book of the Week Pick for June 2021 As featured on the BBC documentaries, 'The Most Hated Family in America' and 'Surviving America's Most Hated Family' It was an upbringing in many ways normal. A loving home, shared with squabbling siblings, overseen by devoted parents. Yet in other ways it was the precise opposite: a revolving door of TV camera crews and documentary makers, a world of extreme discipline, of siblings vanishing in the night. Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in the Westboro Baptist Church - the fire-and-brimstone religious sect at once aggressively homophobic and anti-Semitic, rejoiceful for AIDS and natural disasters, and notorious for its picketing the funerals of American soldiers. From her first public protest, aged five, to her instrumental role in spreading the church's invective via social media, her formative years brought their difficulties. But being reviled was not one of them. She was preaching God's truth. She was, in her words, 'all in'. In November 2012, at the age of twenty-six, she left the church, her family, and her life behind. Unfollow is a story about the rarest thing of all: a person changing their mind. It is a fascinating insight into a closed world of extreme belief, a biography of a complex family, and a hope-inspiring memoir of a young woman finding the courage to find compassion for others, as well as herself. --- More praise for Unfollow 'A beautiful, gripping book about a singular soul, and an unexpected redemption' - Nick Hornby 'A modern-day parable for how we should speak and listen to each other' - Dolly Alderton 'Her journey - from Westboro to becoming one of the most empathetic, thoughtful, humanistic writers around - is exceptional and inspiring' - Jon Ronson 'A gripping story, beautifully told . . . It takes real talent to produce a book like this. Its message could not be more urgent' Sunday Times

This study describes the creation of the Primitive Baptist movement and discusses the main outlines of their thought. It also weaves the story of the Primitive Baptists with other developments in American Christianity in the Early Republic.

A veteran Baptist pastor and ministry professor offers a distinctive free church vision for pastoral leadership, attending to voices from the past four centuries as they speak about the practice of ministry. The book contains theological reflection on current ministry issues among Baptists based on biblical and historical foundations and reflects a diversity of Baptist life across time and around the world, including many different voices. Each chapter contains reflection questions to help readers consider the implications of Baptist thinking.

The revised edition of "A Theology for the Church" retains its original structure, organized under these traditional theological categories: revelation, God, humanity, Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church, and last things.
Each chapter within these sections contains answers to the following four questions: What does the Bible say? What has the church believed? How does it all fit together? How does this doctrine impact the church today?
Contributions from leading Baptist thinkers R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Paige Patterson, and Mark Dever among others will also appeal to the broader evangelical community. Included in this revision are new chapters on theological method from a missional perspective (Bruce Ashford and Keith Whitfield) and theology of creation, providence, and Sabbath that engages current research in science and philosophy (Chad Owen Brand). Chapters on special revelation (David Dockery) and human nature (John Hammett) have also been updated.

This study describes the creation of the Primitive Baptist movement and discusses the main outlines of their thought. It also weaves the story of the Primitive Baptists with other developments in American Christianity in the Early Republic.

"Clarence Jordan spoke with an unwavering prophetic voice. He firmly rejected materialism, militarism, and racism as obstacles to authentic faith... He was a fearless and innovative defender of human rights." -President Jimmy Carter On 440 depleted acres in Sumter County, Georgia, a young Baptist preacher and farmer named Clarence Jordan gathered a few families and set out to show that Jesus intended more than spiritual fellowship. Like the first Christians, they would share their land, money, and possessions. Working together to rejuvenate the soil and the local economy, they would demonstrate racial and social justice with their lives. Black and white community members eating together at the same table scandalized local Christians, drew the ire of the KKK, and led to drive-by shootings, a firebombing, and an economic boycott. This bold experiment in nonviolence, economic justice, and sustainable agriculture was deeply rooted in Clarence Jordan's understanding of the person and teachings of Jesus, which stood in stark contrast to the hypocrisy of churches that blessed wars, justified wealth disparity, and enforced racial segregation. "You can't put Christianity into practice," Jordan wrote, "You can't make it work. As desperately as it is needed in this poor, broken world, it is not a philosophy of life to be 'tried.' Nor is it a social or ethical ideal which has tantalized humankind with the possibility of attainment. For Christianity is not a system you work - it is a Person who works you." This selection from his talks and writings introduces Clarence Jordan's radically biblical vision to a new generation of peacemakers, community builders, and activists.

This volume makes a significant contribution to the 'history of ecclesiastical histories', with a fresh analysis of historians of evangelicalism from the eighteenth century to the present. It explores the ways in which their scholarly methods and theological agendas shaped their writings. Each chapter presents a case study in evangelical historiography. Some of the historians and biographers examined here were ministers and missionaries, while others were university scholars. They are drawn from Anglican, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Fundamentalist and Pentecostal denominations. Their histories cover not only transatlantic evangelicalism, but also the spread of the movement across China, Africa, and indeed the whole globe. Some wrote for a popular Christian readership, emphasising edification and evangelical hagiography; others have produced weighty monographs for the academy. These case studies shed light on the way the discipline has developed, and also the heated controversies over whether one approach to evangelical history is more legitimate than the rest. As a result, this book will be of considerable interest to historians of religion.

Originally published in 1988 Religious Higher Education in the United States is a selected bibliography of sources addressing how religion has changed and affected education in the United States. This volume attempts to address the problems currently facing religious institutions of higher education, covering government aid and the regulation of religious colleges and universities in the US.

Originally published in 1996 Religious Higher Education in the United States looks at the issue of higher education and a lack of a clearly articulated purpose, an issue particularly challenging to religiously-affiliated institutions. This volume attempts to address the problems currently facing denomination-affiliated institutions of higher education, beginning with an introduction to government aid and the regulation of religious colleges and universities in the US. The greater part of the volume consists of 24 chapters, each of which begins with a historical essay followed by annotated bibliographical entries covering primary and secondary sources dating back to 1986 on various denomination-connected institutions.

Originally published in 1988 Religious Higher Education in the United States is a selected bibliography of sources addressing how religion has changed and affected education in the United States. This volume attempts to address the problems currently facing religious institutions of higher education, covering government aid and the regulation of religious colleges and universities in the US.

While Baptists through the years have been certain that "war is hell", they have not always been able to agree on how to respond to it. This book traces much of this troubled relationship from the days of Baptist origins with close ties to pacifist Anabaptists to the responses of Baptists in America to the Vietnam War. Essays also include discussions of the English Baptist Andrew Fuller's response to the threat of Napoleon, how Baptists in America dealt with the War of 1812, the support of Canadian Baptists for Britain's war in Sudan and Abyssinia in the 1880s, the decisive effect of the First World War on Canada's T.T. Shields, the response of Australian Baptists to the Second World War, and how Russian Baptists dealt with the Cold War. These chapters provide important analyses of Baptist reactions to various manifestations of one of society's most intractable problems.

Although literary-historical studies have often focused on the range of dissenting religious groups and writers that flourished during the English Revolution, they have rarely had much to say about seventeenth-century Baptists, or, indeed, Baptist women. Baptist Women's Writings in Revolutionary Culture, 1640-1680 fills that gap, exploring how female Baptists played a crucial role in the group's formation and growth during the 1640s and 50s, by their active participation in religious and political debate, and their desire to evangelise their followers. The study significantly challenges the idea that women, as members of these congregations, were unable to write with any kind of textual authority because they were often prevented from speaking aloud in church meetings. On the contrary, Adcock shows that Baptist women found their way into print to debate points of church organisation and doctrine, to defend themselves and their congregations, to evangelise others by example and by teaching, and to prophesy, and discusses the rhetorical tactics they utilised in order to demonstrate the value of women's contributions. In the course of the study, Adcock considers and analyses the writings of little-studied Baptist women, Deborah Huish, Katherine Sutton, and Jane Turner, as well as separatist writers Sara Jones, Susanna Parr, and Anne Venn. She also makes due connection to the more familiar work of Agnes Beaumont, Anna Trapnel, and Anne Wentworth, enabling a reassessment of the significance of those writings by placing them in this wider context. Writings by these female Baptists attracted serious attention, and, as Adcock discusses, some even found a trans-national audience.

Christ declares, "Abide in me, and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me" ( John 15:4). A branch derives life from the vine by virtue of its union with the vine. Similarly, Christ is the vine, and we are the branches. There is a vital, organic union between us. We draw on Christ's life through the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us. We must, therefore, abide in Christ by cultivating close and constant communion with him. We must continually look "unto Jesus the author and finisher of faith" (Hebrews 12:2). The present work seeks to explain what this looking implies. It does so by turning to the writings of two largely forgotten Puritans and Baptists from the seventeenth century - Thomas Wilcox and Vavasor Powell. Together, they teach us that to abide in Christ is to behold him in his manifold roles and relations. As we do so, Christ becomes our all in all.

The author provides a detailed portrait of the Spiritual Baptist Faith and Orisha Work, two religions that share a common basis in the traditional religion of the Yoruba in West Africa. Specifically, the author studies the phenomenon of spirit possession, an integral aspect of worship in both religions. In the Spiritual Baptist Faith, a person who is possessed by the Holy Spirit retains his or her own identity, while in Orisha Work, those who are possessed by the orishas (spirits), become the spirits. Both types of possession are based on the Yoruba concept of self in which identity is dependent on the spirit which animates a physical body. This common basis of religions enables the respective populations to interact extensively and explains why an individual can experience both types of spiritual possession.

C H Spurgeon said of this great Confession - "Here the youngest members of our church will have a body of Truth in small compass, and by means of the scriptural proofs, will be able to give a reason of the hope that is in them." This brilliant summary of doctrine (in the same family as the Westminster Confession), with its invaluable proof texts, is here gently modernised in punctuation, with archaic words replaced. Explanations of difficult phrases have been added in italic brackets. A brief history of the Confession, with an index, is included.

Barry Harvey provides a doctrine of the church that combines Baptist distinctives and origins with an unbending commitment to the visible church as the social body of Christ. Speaking to the broader Christian community, Harvey updates, streamlines, and recontextualizes the arguments he made in an earlier edition of this book (Can These Bones Live?). This new edition offers a style of ecclesial witness that can help Christian churches engage culture. The author suggests new ways Baptists can engage ecumenically with Catholics and other Protestants, offers insights for Christian worship and practice, and shows how the fragmented body of Christ can be re-membered after Christendom.

Originally published in 1996 Religious Higher Education in the United States looks at the issue of higher education and a lack of a clearly articulated purpose, an issue particularly challenging to religiously-affiliated institutions. This volume attempts to address the problems currently facing denomination-affiliated institutions of higher education, beginning with an introduction to government aid and the regulation of religious colleges and universities in the US. The greater part of the volume consists of 24 chapters, each of which begins with a historical essay followed by annotated bibliographical entries covering primary and secondary sources dating back to 1986 on various denomination-connected institutions.

Malkhaz Songulashvili, former Archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia (EBCG), provides a pioneering, exacting, and sweeping history of Georgian Baptists. Utilizing archival sources in Georgian, Russian, German, and Englishatranslating many of these crucial documents for the first time into Englishahe recounts the history of the EBCG from its formation in 1867 to the present. While the particular story of Georgian Baptists merits telling in its own right, and not simply as a feature of Russian religious life, Songulashvili employs Georgian Baptists as a sustained case study on the convergence of religion and culture. The interaction of Eastern Orthodox, Western Protestant, and Russian dissenting religious traditionsamixed into the political cauldron of Russian occupation of a formerly distinct eastern European culturealed to a remarkable experiment in Christian free-church identity. Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia allows readers to peer through the lens of intercultural studies to see the powerful relationships among politics, religion, and culture in the formation of Georgian Baptists, and their blending of Orthodox tradition into Baptist life to craft a unique ecclesiology, liturgy, and aesthetics.