Originally published in 1953, this book presents a biography of the renowned British classical scholar Terrot Reaveley Glover (1869-1943). The text provides a detailed account of Glover's life, from his childhood in Bristol onwards. Notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the life and works of Glover.

A Seventh-Day Adventist mother explains to her son the history and development of the Christian church from the first century to today, emphasizing the Protestant Reformation, the history of religion in America, and various Biblical prophecies.

Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church tells the story of one of the largest African churches in South Africa, Ibandla lamaNazaretha, or Church of the Nazaretha. Founded in 1910 by charismatic faith-healer Isaiah Shembe, the Nazaretha church, with over four million members, has become an influential social and political player in the region. Deeply influenced by a transnational evangelical literary culture, Nazaretha believers have patterned their lives upon the Christian Bible. They cast themselves as actors who enact scriptural drama upon African soil. But Nazaretha believers also believe the existing Christian Bible to be in need of updating and revision. For this reason, they have written further scriptures - a new 'Bible' - which testify to the miraculous work of their founding prophet, Shembe. Joel Cabrita's book charts the key role that these sacred texts play in making, breaking and contesting social power and authority, both within the church and more broadly in South African public life.

Coinciding with the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Baptist movement, this book explores and assesses the cultural sources of Baptist beliefs and practices. Although the movement has been embraced, enriched, and revised by numerous cultural heritages, the Baptist movement has focused on a small group of Anglo exiles in Amersterdam in constructing its history and identity. Robert E. Johnson seeks to recapture the varied cultural and theological sources of Baptist tradition and to give voice to the diverse global elements of the movement that have previously been excluded or marginalized. With an international communion of over 110 million persons in more than 225,000 congregations, Baptists constitute the world s largest aggregate of evangelical Protestants. This work offers insight into the diversity, breadth, and complexity of the cultural influences that continue to shape Baptist identity today.

Baptists are a study in contrasts. From Little Dove Old Regular Baptist Church, up a hollow in the Appalachian Mountains, with its 25-member congregation, to the 18,000-strong Saddleback Valley Church in Orange County, California, where hymns appear on wide-screen projectors; from Jerry Falwell, Jesse Helms, and Tim LaHaye to Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, and Maya Angelou, Baptist churches and their members have encompassed a range of theological interpretations and held a variety of social and political viewpoints. At first glance, Baptist theology seems classically Protestant in its emphasis on the Trinity, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture, salvation by faith alone, and baptism by immersion. Yet the interpretation and implementation of these beliefs have made Baptists one of the most fragmented denominations in the United States. Not surprisingly, they are often characterized as a people who "multiply by dividing."

"Baptists in America" introduces readers to this fascinating and diverse denomination, offering a historical and sociological portrait of a group numbering some thirty million members. Bill J. Leonard traces the history of Baptists, beginning with their origins in seventeenth-century Holland and England. He examines the development of Baptist beliefs and practices, offering an overview of the various denominations and fellowships within Baptism. Leonard also considers the disputes surrounding the question of biblical authority, the ordinances (baptism and the Lord's Supper), congregational forms of church governance, and religious liberty.

The social and political divisions among Baptists are often as dramatic, if not more so, than the theological divides. Leonard examines the role of Baptists in the Fundamentalist and Social Gospel movements of the early twentieth century. The Civil Rights movement began in African American Baptist churches. More recently, Baptists have been key figures in the growth of the Religious Right, criticizing the depravity of American popular culture, supporting school prayer, and championing other conservative social causes. Leonard also explores the social and religious issues currently dividing Baptists, including race, the ordination of women, the separation of church and state, and sexuality. In the final chapter Leonard discusses the future of Baptist identity in America.

This book presents the history of two religious sects successfully established in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, where it was illegal to participate in any faith other than the legally established congregationalism of the Puritan founders of the colony. Taking a comparative approach, the author examines the Quaker meeting in Salem and the Baptist church in Boston over more than a century. The work opens with the dramatic events surrounding dissenters' efforts to gain a foothold in the colony, and goes on to locate sectarians within their families and communities, and to examine their beliefs and the changing nature of the organizations they founded and their interactions with the larger community and its leaders. The work deals with the religiosity of lay colonists, finding that men and women responded to these sects differently. It also analyzes sociological theories of sectarian evolution, the politics of dissent, and changes in beliefs and practices.

Rhode Island can legitimately claim to be the home of Baptists in America. The first three varieties of Baptists in the New World - General Six Principle, Particular, and Seventh Day - made their debut in this small colony. And it was in Rhode Island that the General Six Principle Baptists formed the first Baptist association; the Seventh Day Baptists organized the first national denomination of Baptists; the Regular Baptists founded the first Baptist college, Brown University; and the Warren Baptist Association led the fight for religious liberty in New England. In Retracing Baptists in Rhode Island, historian J. Stanley Lemons follows the story of Baptists, from their founding in the colonial period to the present. Lemons considers the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration upon Baptists as they negotiated their identities in an ever-changing American landscape. Rhode Island Baptists, regardless of variety, stood united on the question of temperance, hesitated on the abolition of slavery before the Civil War, and uniformly embraced revivalism, but they remained vexed and divided over denominational competition, the anti-Masonic movement, and the Dorr Rebellion. Lemons also chronicles the relationship between Rhode Island Baptists and the broader Baptist world. Modernism and historical criticism finally brought the Baptist theological civil war to Rhode Island. How to interpret the Bible became increasingly pressing, even leading to the devolution of Brown's identity as a Baptist institution. Since the 1940s, the number of Baptists in the state has declined, despite the number of Baptist denominations rising from four to twelve. At the same time, the number of independent Baptist churches has greatly increased while other churches have shed their Baptist identity completely to become nondenominational. Lemons asserts that tectonic shifts in Baptist identity will continue to create a new landscape out of the heritage and traditions first established by the original Baptists of Rhode Island.

Chronologically arranged: exhibiting their distinct communities, with their orders in various kingdoms, under several discriminative appellations from the establishment of Christianity to the present age: with correlative information, supporting the early and only practice of believers' immersion: also observations and notes on the abuse of the ordinance, and the rise of minor and infant baptism. By G. H. Orchard ... With an introductory essay, by J. R. Graves.

The antebellum southern Baptist churches were led, in general, by populists who addressed their appeals to the common person and allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters. Paradoxically, at the same time, no denomination could wield the religious authority as ruthlessly as the Baptists - between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills traces this split to two rival strains in the Baptist church - moderates who emphasized personal religious freedom and tolerance, and fundamentalists who preached discipline and the inerrancy of scripture. He demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individuals came to embrace exclusionist spirituality, and how the results of that conflict continue to affect the church.

This work offers a survey on the history of Baptists. When John Smyth organized the first Baptist church, he wanted to establish the New Testament church; believer's baptism was the missing link. Baptists of subsequent eras often continued the search to embody 'New Testament Christianity'. Unique to surveys of Baptist life, Doug Weaver highlights this restorationist theme as a way to understand Baptist identity. Weaver does not force the theme, but the 'search' is ever present. It is found in the insistence upon believer's baptism, but also in examples like the Sabbath worship of Seventh Day Baptists, the 'nine rites' of colonial Separate Baptists, the women preachers of Free Will Baptists, the 'trail of blood' of Landmarkism, the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, the 'fundamentals' of fundamentalism and the ministry of the European pioneer Johann Oncken. Like other recent Baptist studies, Weaver describes Baptist diversity. Still, he highlights the persistent commitment of most Baptists to an informal constellation of 'Baptist distinctives'. Alongside the quest for the New Testament church (and congregational community), Weaver especially highlights the Baptist commitment to religious liberty and the individual conscience. This emphasis, while later reinforced by Enlightenment ideals, could already be found in the biblicist piety of the earliest Baptists who insisted that individual believers must have the right to choose their religious beliefs because they would stand alone before God at the final judgment. Both chronological and thematic, this book addresses such themes as the role of women, the social gospel, ecumenism, charismatic influences, and theological emphases in Baptist life. The book's focus is America, but it also includes helpful introductory chapters on early English Baptists and international Baptists.

Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church tells the story of one of the largest African churches in South Africa, Ibandla lamaNazaretha, or Church of the Nazaretha. Founded in 1910 by charismatic faith-healer Isaiah Shembe, the Nazaretha church, with over four million members, has become an influential social and political player in the region. Deeply influenced by a transnational evangelical literary culture, Nazaretha believers have patterned their lives upon the Christian Bible. They cast themselves as actors who enact scriptural drama upon African soil. But Nazaretha believers also believe the existing Christian Bible to be in need of updating and revision. For this reason, they have written further scriptures - a new 'Bible' - which testify to the miraculous work of their founding prophet, Shembe. Joel Cabrita's book charts the key role that these sacred texts play in making, breaking and contesting social power and authority, both within the church and more broadly in South African public life.

For centuries, Baptists have published confessions of faith as formal statements of their beliefs. Chief among these is the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. This doctrinal statement is a spiritual treasure trove worthy of our fresh attention. In this new study, more than twenty contributors unpack its timeless biblical truths, 'things which are most surely believed among us' (Luke 1:1). Our prayer is that the Lord will use this volume to richly edify and sanctify His people worldwide, and to assist the churches in pursuing biblical holiness and doctrinal purity. May these labors send God's people back again and again to the Bible, which is-as the confession states-the 'only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience' (1.1). Includes contributions from: Earl M. Blackburn Brian Borgman Dave Chanski David Charles Jason Ching Victor Claudio Jim Domm Gary Hendrix Steven Hofmaier Jeff Johnson Mitch Lush Lee McKinnon John Price Mike Renihan John Reuther Mark Sarver James Savastio Jeffery Smith Rob Ventura Calvin Walden Sam Waldron Austin Walker Jeremy Walker