In The Power of Mammon, Curtis D. Johnson describes how the market economy and market-related forces, such as the media, politics, individualism, and consumerism, radically changed the nature of Baptist congregational life in New York State during three centuries. Collectively, these forces emphasized the importance of material wealth over everything else, and these values penetrated the thinking of Baptist ministers and laypeople alike. Beginning in the 1820s, the pastorate turned into a profession, the laity's influence diminished, closeknit religious fellowships evolved into voluntary associations, and evangelism became far less effective. Men, being the most engaged in the market, secularized the more quickly and became less involved in church affairs. By the 1870s, male disengagement opened the door to increased female participation in church governance. While scientific advances and religious pluralism also played a role, the market and its related distractions were the primary forces behind the secularization of Baptist life. The Power of Mammon is history from the ground up. Unlike many denominational histories, this book emphasizes congregational life and the importance of the laity. This focus allows the reader to hear the voices of ordinary Baptists who argued over a host of issues. Johnson deftly connects large social trends with exhaustive attention to archival material, including numerous well-chosen records preserved by forty-two New York churches. These records include details related to membership, discipline, finance, and institutional history. Utilizing statistical analysis to achieve even greater clarity, Johnson effectively bridges the gap between the particularity of church records and the broader history of New York's Baptist churches. Johnson's narrative of Baptist history in New York will serve as a model for other regional studies and adds to our understanding of secularization and its impact on American religion.

Baptists originated as a protest movement within the church but have developed over time into a distinct sect, one committed to preserving its place in the hierarchy of denominations. In today's postmodern, disestablished context, Baptists are in danger of becoming either a religious affinity group, a collection of individuals who share experiences and commitments to a set of principles, or a countercultural sect that retreats to early Enlightenment propositions for consolation and support.In Contesting Catholicity, Curtis W. Freeman offers an alternative Baptist identity, an "Other" kind of Baptist, one that stands between the liberal and fundamentalist options. By discerning an elegant analogy among some late modern Baptist preachers, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baptist founders, and early patristic theologians, Freeman narrates the Baptist story as a community that grapples with the convictions of the church catholic. Deep analogical conversation across the centuries enables Freeman to gain new leverage on all of the supposedly distinctive Baptist theological identifiers. From believer's baptism, the sacraments, and soul competency, to the Trinity, the priesthood of every believer, and local church autonomy, Freeman's historical reconstruction demonstrates that Baptists did and should understand themselves as a spiritual movement within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. A "catholic Baptist" is fully participant in the historic church and at the very same time is fully Baptist. This radical Baptist catholicity is more than a quantitative sense of historical and ecumenical communion with the wider church. This Other Baptist identity envisions a qualitative catholicity that is centered on the confession of faith in Jesus Christ and historic Trinitarian orthodoxy enacted in the worship of the church in and through word and sacrament.

John Paul Newport was perhaps the most influential American Baptist philosopher and apologist of the twentieth century. He became legendary as a Baptist statesman, scholar, peacemaker, and transformational professor, who supervised more than fifty Ph.D. students in philosophy, apologetics, theology, biblical studies, and world religions. Written from the unpublished autobiographical papers of John Newport, this official biography, Like a River Glorious, examines the life and legacy of one of America's premier Baptist scholars.Newport studied with the best minds of his day and taught for more than fifty years in Baptist colleges and seminaries, as well as at Rice University. He was also a churchman in pulpits across the South, serving as interim pastor in more than 150 churches in four states. His best-known book, Life's Ultimate Questions, synthesized the most-asked questions about what it means to live as a human being, and anchored his responses in a reasoned, philosophical, and biblical worldview. Newport spent most of his career at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where he chaired the philosophy department and served as vice president of academic affairs and provost. He was also the special consultant to then-president Russell Dilday and helped to lead the institution through some of its most difficult days. Newport was an open, approachable, and eminently constructive Christian in his day, inviting his audiences to engage with the world of ideas, other Christians, and people of non-Christian faiths. The story of his unparalleled and remarkable journey unfolds in these pages, a testament to his legacy and an invitation for future Christian leaders to follow in his wake.

Mechal Sobel's fascinating study of the religious history of slaves and free blacks in antebellum America is presented here in a compact volume without the appendixes. Sobel's central thesis is that Africans brought their world views into North America where, eventually, under the tremendous pressures and hardships of chattel slavery, they created a coherent faith that preserved and revitalized crucial African understandings and usages regarding spirit and soul-travels, while melding them with Christian understandings of Jesus and individual salvation.