Baptist theologians Amy L. Chilton and Steven R. Harmon maintain that the congregational freedom cherished by Baptists makes it possible for their local churches to engage in a practice of theology informed by a full range of voices speaking from the whole church beyond the local church, past and present. In their coedited book Sources Of Light, a diverse group of twenty-three Baptist theologians engage in a collaborative attempt to imagine how Baptist communities might draw on the resources of the whole church more intentionally in their congregational practice of theology. These resources include theologies that attend to the social locations of followers of Jesus Christ - not only in terms of ethnic and gender identity, sexual orientation, citizenship status, and physical ability, but also in relation to the wider interreligious and ecological contexts of the contemporary church. They also include the church's efforts to bring its life together under the rule of Christ in its practices of confessing and teaching the faith, navigating moral disagreement, identifying saintly examples for living the Christian life, ordering its life as a worshiping community, and seeking more visible forms of Christian unity across the divisions of the church. This book commends listening deeply to these voices as an ecclesial practice through which the Spirit of God enlightens the church of Christ, whose rule draws the church into deeper participation in the life of the Triune God, forming the church for practices that offer the gift of Trinitarian communion to a fractured world. Contributors include: Amy L. Chilton, Noel Leo Erskine, Nora O. Lozano, Atola Longkumer, Mikeal N. Broadway, Courtney Pace, Susan M. Shaw, Khalia J. Williams, Cody J. Sanders, May May Latt, Jason D. Whitt, Raimundo C. Barretto, Jr., Rebecca Horner Shenton, Curtis W. Freeman, Kate Hanch, Rady Roldan-Figueroa, Stephen R. Holmes, Coleman Fannin, Myles Werntz, Derek C. Hatch, Philip E. Thompson, Jennifer W. Davidson, and Steven R. Harmon.

Embracing in one common trajectory the major Baptist confessions of faith, the major Baptist theologians, and the principal Baptist theological movements and controversies, this book spans four centuries of Baptist doctrinal history. Acknowledging first the pre-1609 roots (patristic, medieval, Reformational) of Baptist theology, it examines the Arminian versus Calvinist issues that the General and the Particular Baptists first expressed. These issues dominated English and American Baptist theology during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from Helwys and Smyth and from Bunyan and Kiffin to Gill, Fuller, Backus, and Boyce and were quickened by the awakenings and the missionary movement. Concurrently, the Baptist defended distinctives vis-a-vis the pedobaptist world and the unfolding of a strong Baptist confessional tradition. Then during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the liberal versus evangelical issues became dominant with Hovey, Strong, Rauschenbusch, and Henry in the North and Mullins, Conner, Hobbs, and Criswell in the South even as a distinctive Baptist Landmarkism developed, the discipline of biblical theology was practiced and a structured ecumenism was pursued. Missiology both impacted Baptist theology and took it to all the continents, where it became increasingly indigenous. Conscious that Baptists belong to the free churches and to the believers' churches, a new generation of Baptist theologians at the advent of the twenty-first century was somewhat more Calvinist than Arminian and decidedly more evangelical than liberal.

Eugene W. Baker recounts the eighty-year life of Baylor University's most recognizable founder--Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor. Drawing on the personal records of Baylor himself, Baker constructs a complete history of the founder, from his ancestral roots until the time of his death in 1873. One of the three founders of Baylor University, Judge R.E.B. Baylor's life as a committed Christian, military devotee, and Texan is remarkably captured in this comprehensive volume.

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.