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.

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.

In Mainstreaming Fundamentalism: John R. Rice and Fundamentalism's Public Reemergence, Keith Bates embarks on a thematic and chronological exploration of twentieth-century Baptist fundamentalism in postwar America, sharing the story of a man whose career intersected with many other leading fundamentalists of the twentieth century, such as J. Frank Norris, Bob Jones Sr., Bob Jones Jr., and Jerry Falwell.Unique among histories of American fundamentalism, this book explores the theme of Southern fundamentalism's reemergence through a biographical lens. John R. Rice's mission to inspire a broad cultural activism within fundamentalism - particularly by opposing those who fostered an isolationist climate - would give direction and impetus to the movement for the rest of the twentieth century. To support this claim, Bates presents chapters on Rice's background and education, personal and ecclesiastical separatism, and fundamentalism and political action, tracing his rise to leadership during a critical phase of fundamentalism's development until his death in 1980. Bates draws heavily upon primary source texts that include writings from Rice's fundamentalist contemporaries, his own The Sword of the Lord articles, and his private papers - particularly correspondence with many nationally known preachers, local pastors, and laypeople over more than fifty years of Rice's ministry. The incorporation of these writings, combined with Bates's own conversations with Rice's family, facilitate a deeply detailed, engaging examination that fills a significant gap in fundamentalist history studies. Mainstreaming Fundamentalism: John R. Rice and Fundamentalism's Public Reemergence provides a nuanced and insightful study that will serve as a helpful resource to scholars and students of postwar American fundamentalism, Southern fundamentalism, and Rice's contemporaries.