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.

BETWEEN 1815 and 1848, Primitive Baptists emerged as a distinct, dominant religious group in the area of the deepest South known as the Wiregrass country. John Crowley, a historian and former Primitive minister, chronicles their origins and expansion into South Georgia and Florida, documenting one of the strongest aspects of the inner life of the local piney-woods culture.

Crowley begins by examining Old Baptist worship and discipline and then addressing Primitive Baptist reaction to the Civil War, Reconstruction, Populism, Progressivism, the Depression, and finally the ferment of the 1960s and present decline of the denomination. Intensely conservative, with a strong belief in predestination, Old Baptists opposed modernizing trends sweeping their denomination in the early nineteenth century. Crowley describes their separation from Southern Baptists and the many internal schisms on issues such as the saving role of the gospel, the Two Seed doctrine, and absolute as opposed to limited predestination. Going beyond doctrine, he discusses contention among Old Baptists over music, divorce, membership in secret societies, sacraments administered by heretics, and rituals such as the washing of feet.

Writing with insight and sensitivity, he navigates the history of this denomination through the twentieth century and the emergence of at least twenty mutually exclusive factions of Primitive Baptists in this specific region of the Deep South.

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.

To the pioneer folk of Upper and Lower Canada-Loyalists, "late" Loyalists, and the hordes of land-seekers-living in what seemed like religious destitution, various American Baptist missionary associations in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York State sent missionary preachers in the decade after 1800. Numerous small churches were established, but the War of 1812 disturbed these efforts, and much of the missionary activity itself had to be abandoned for an interval. This may well have stimulated the co-operation which had already appeared before the war between Canadian Baptist communities. Out of this co-operation were to develop conferences and associations of Canadian Baptist churches, until by 1820 all were members of Canadian groups. By 1818 travelling missionaries from the United States had almost ceased to visit; the Canadian churches had begun to raise up ministers from among their own members. In this very complete investigation of early Baptist history in Canada, assembled from a wide variety of sources, every separate group has been recorded and its development traced, and all available information has been coordinated for the missionaries and ministers who served the groups. The book is a veritable encyclopaedia of early Baptist history and will be invaluable to future students of Baptist history in general. This study of a developing cultural tradition strikingly parallels the struggle to master the physical features of a new land.

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.

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.

The definitive social history of the Disciples of Christ in the 19th century.

The Disciples of Christ, led by reformers such as Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, was one of a number of early-19th-century primitivist religious movements seeking to "restore the ancient order of things." The Disciples movement was little more than a loose collection of independent congregations until the middle of the 19th century, but by 1900 three clear groupings of churches had appeared. Today, more than 5 million Americans--members
of the modern-day Disciples of Christ (Christian Church), Independent Christian Churches, and Churches of Christ, among others--trace their religious heritage to this "Restoration Movement."

With 16.3 million members and 44,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Baptist group in the world, and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Unlike the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists have remained stubbornly conservative, refusing to adapt their beliefs and practices to modernity's individualist and populist values. Instead, they have held fast to traditional orthodoxy in such fundamental areas as biblical inspiration, creation, conversion, and miracles. Gregory Wills argues that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has played a fundamental role in the persistence of conservatism, not entirely intentionally. Tracing the history of the seminary from the beginning to the present, Wills shows how its foundational commitment to preserving orthodoxy was implanted in denominational memory in ways that strengthened the denomination's conservatism and limited the seminary's ability to stray from it. In a set of circumstances in which the seminary played a central part, Southern Baptists' populist values bolstered traditional orthodoxy rather than diminishing it. In the end, says Wills, their populism privileged orthodoxy over individualism. The story of Southern Seminary is fundamental to understanding Southern Baptist controversy and identity. Wills's study sheds important new light on the denomination that has played - and continues to play - such a central role in our national history.

Provides an illuminating look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, focusing particularly outside of mainstream Christian churches From the Moorish Science Temple to the Peace Mission Movement of Father Divine to the Commandment Keepers sect of Black Judaism, myriad Black new religious movements developed during the time of the Great Migration. Many of these stood outside of Christianity, but some remained at least partially within the Christian fold. The Black Coptic Church is one of these. Black Coptics combined elements of Black Protestant and Black Hebrew traditions with Ethiopianism as a way of constructing a divine racial identity that embraced the idea of a royal Egyptian heritage for its African American followers, a heroic identity that was in stark contrast to the racial identity imposed on African Americans by the white dominant culture. This embrace of a royal Blackness—what McKinnis calls an act of “fugitive spirituality”—illuminates how the Black Coptic tradition in Chicago and beyond uniquely employs a religio-performative imagination. McKinnis asks, ‘What does it mean to imagine Blackness?’ Drawing on ten years of archival research and interviews with current members of the church, The Black Coptic Church offers a look at a group that insisted on its own understanding of its divine Blackness. In the process, it provides a more complex look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, particularly within non-mainstream Christian churches.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

"Smith has written a richly detailed, valuable study that clearly deserves a place on the shelves of scholars of southern politics and of religion and politics."
"--American Political Science Review"

""A fascinating and well-documented study of the transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) into the single largest religious force in modern American politics.""
"--Southeastern Political Review"

By championing the ideals of independence, evangelism, and conservism, the Southern Baptist Covention (SBC) has grown into the largest Protestant denomination in the country. The Convention's mass democratic form of church government, its influential anual meetings, and its sheer size have made it a barometer for Southern political and cultural shift. Its most recent shift has been starboard-toward fundementalism and Republicanism.

While the Convention once ofered a happy home to Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and church-state separationists, in the past two decades the SBC has become an uncomfortable institution for Democrats, progressive theologians, and other moderate voices. Current SBC member-heroes include Senators Trent Lott and Jesse Helms. Despite this seeming marginalization, Southern Baptist politicians have grown from political obscurity to occupying the four highest positions in the constitutional order of succesion to the presidency. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Senate President pro-tempore Strom Thurmond, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich are all Southern Baptists.

In its emerging Republicanism, the SBC has taken on characteristics of its more active fellow travelers in the Christian Right, forgingalliances with former enemies (African Americans amd Roman Catholics), playing presidential politics, establishing a Washington lobbying presence, working the political grassroots, and declaring war on Walt Disney. Each of these missions has been accomplished with calculating political precision.

The Rise of Baptist Republicanism traces the Republicanization of the SBC's Republicanism in the context of the rise of the Fundamentalist Right and the emergence of a Republican majority in the South. Describing the SBC's political roots, Oran P. Smith contrasts Baptist Republicans with the rest of the Christian Right while revealing the theological, cultural, and historical factors which have made Southern Baptists receptive to Republican/Fundamentalist Right influences. The book is a must read for anyone wishing to understand the intersection of religion and politics in America today.

Southern Baptists are the nation's largest protestant denomination, with over 43,000 churches and millions of members. Since its inception, controversy has surrounded the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Southern Baptists' most recent confession of faith. The present volume consists of essays by Baptist scholars explaining and defending that document. Each of the 18 articles of the BF&M 2000 is addressed, with special attention to the most critical issues and changes from the denomination's 1963 confession. Also included is an appendix comprising the full text of all three Baptist Faith and Message statements from the 20th century (1925, 1963, and 2000), in side-by-side columns for easy reference and comparison. Contributors include Al Mohler, Paige Patterson, Tom Nettles, Dorothy Patterson, E. David Cook, and C. Ben Mitchell, with a foreword by Susie Hawkins. Brief yet comprehensive, detailed yet accessible to the non-specialist, this volume is a must read for Southern Baptist professors and students, staff and church members, and anyone interested in one of the most powerful religious forces in America.

The mid-seventeenth century saw both the expansion of the Baptist sect and the rise and growth of Quakerism. At first, the Quaker movement attracted some Baptist converts, but relations between the two groups soon grew hostile. Public disputes broke out and each group denounced the other in polemical tracts. Nevertheless in this book, Underwood contends that Quakers and Baptists had much in common with each other, as well as with the broader Puritan and Nonconformist tradition. By examining the Quaker/Baptist relationship in particular, Underwood seeks to understand where and why Quaker views diverged from English Protestantism in general and, in the process, to clarify early Quaker beliefs.

Democracy has not always fostered anti-authoritarian individualism. No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populist preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person. Paradoxically, no denomination wielded religious authority as zealously as the Baptists. Between 1785 and 1860 they ritually (and democratically) excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace an exclusivist spirituality - a spirituality that continues to shape Southern Baptist churches in contemporary conflicts between moderates who urge tolerance and conservatives who require belief in scriptural inerrancy. Wills's analysis advances our understanding of the interaction between democracy and religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as to Baptist observers.

Traces the life of Harry Emerson Fosdick, discusses the development of his religious beliefs, and examines his influence on Protestantism in America.

Son of a missionary, born in the Congo, Billy endured a strict upbringing before escaping to the Army at 16. Despite the brutality and bullying he survived and did well, being fast-tracked for a commission. He met and married Bev, herself a corporal. Billy soon quit the Army to become a bodyguard to the stars, working with Naomi Campbell, Take That, Bee Gees, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Mel Gibson and others. Billy had always been a drinker but now the celebrity lifestyle introduced him to drugs - dealing, and running with gangsters. He lost his job. Bev and the children suffered as a consequence, and Bev ultimately divorced him. Billy contemplated suicide when a friend reintroduced him to the God he had hated for 30 years. Bev too discovered Christianity: the two would be reconciled, remarry, and have two more children. Now a Baptist pastor, prison chaplain and evangelist, Billy sees in others the miracle that has taken place in himself.

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.

In the English-speaking Western world alone, thousands of men and women begin formal training for Christian ministry each year or informally seek to equip themselves for pastoral ministry. Over the past fifty years, the ancient world of virtue ethics has been re-imagined as a means of forming people of character and morality today. In Shaped for Service, this experience is used as the framework to understand what we are doing as we form Christian ministers now, and how we might strengthen that development by more consciously linking the practices of ministry with the person, spirituality, and wisdom of the practitioner. Writing from the context of a lifetime of pastoral ministry and the oversight of ministers in the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Goodliff explores what pastors do and who they are called to be using a mixture of theological and pastoral enquiry, reflections upon art and personal story. This book will be of interest to those who are charged with forming the next generation of ministers, but anyone beginning that journey of formation for ministry themselves will also find this vision of ministry challenging and inspiring.

The Dr G.R. Beasley-Murray Memorial Lectures were delivered annually between 2002 and 2012 with the aim of extending the legacy of this significant New Testament scholar and church leader into the twenty-first century. Themes addressed include baptism, ministry, preaching, mission, and theological faithfulness. Having first been delivered at the annual Assembly of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the lectures in this volume are now made available to a wider audience and will be of interest to church leaders across the denominations and across the world, and not least to those who stand in Beasley-Murray's own Baptist tradition. George Beasley-Murray died in 2000. The lectures cover a wide range of topics, from baptism to missions, from Evangelical identity to preaching. The lecturers are: Paul Beasley-Murray, former Principal of Spurgeon's College; David Coffey, former President of the Baptist Union and of the Baptist World Alliance; John E. Colwell, Pastor of Budleigh Salterton Baptist Church; Anthony R. Cross, Emeritus Director of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Oxford; Ruth M.B. Gouldbourne, former Tutor in Church History at Bristol Baptist College; Stephen R. Holmes, Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews; Mark Hopkins, Associate Professor of Church History, Theological College of Northern Nigeria; Bruce Milne, formerly Minister of First Baptist Church, Toronto; Michael Quicke, former Principal of Spurgeon's College, London; Brian Stanley, Professor of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh.

Pascal Denault's careful labors over the theological texts of both Baptist and Pedobaptists of the seventeenth century have yielded an excellent study of the relation of baptism to a commonly shared covenantalism. At the same time he has shown that a distinct baptistic interpretation of the substance of the New Covenant, that is, all its conditions having been met in the work of Christ its Mediator resulting in an unconditional application of it to its recipients, formed the most basic difference between the two groups. His careful work on the seventeenth-century documents has yielded a strong, Bible-centered, covenantal defense of believers' baptism and is worthy of a dominant place in the contemporary discussions of both covenantalism and baptism. -Thomas J. Nettles, Ph.D.

A fresh examination of the Baptist movement, showing its growth and development to be more complex than hitherto assumed. This book challenges the orthodoxy that seventeenth-century Baptists were divided from the first into two separate denominations, 'Particular' and 'General', defined by their differing attitudes to predestination and the atonement, showing how the position was in fact much more complicated. It describes how from the foundation of the 'Generals' in 1609 there were always two tendencies, one clericalist and pacifist, influenced by the Dutch Mennonites, and one reflecting the English traditions of erastianism and local lay predominance in religion. It re-analyses the confessional struggle during and after the civil war, showing how Independent and erastian sentiment in Parliament increasingly combined to baulk Presbyterian ambition; during and partly because of this process (which they also influenced), the Baptists evolved into three recognisable tendencies. Amongst General Baptists there was a politically radical current, but also a more passive tendency which was starting to gain ground. In 1647-9 most but by no means all Particular Baptist leaders were hostile to the Levellers. The book looks at the nature of religious convictionin the New Model Army, reassessing the role and influence of Baptists in it. In the late 40s, many Baptists, soldiers and civilians, rejected formal ordinances altogether. STEPHEN WRIGHT received his Ph.D. from the Universityof London. He has been visiting lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of North London.

Best-selling author John Piper puts the life of Andrew Fuller on display as inspriration for all Christians to devote themselves to knowing, guarding, and spreading the true gospel-to the ends of the earth.

This book examines the evolution of post-colonial African Studies through the eyes of Africanists from the Anabaptist (Mennonite and Church of the Brethren) community. The book chronicles the lives of twenty-two academics and practitioners whose work spans from the immediate post-colonial period in the 1960s to the present day, a period in which decolonization and development have dominated scholarly and practitioner debate. Reflecting the values and perspectives they shared with the Mennonite Central Committee and other church-sponsored organizations, the authors consider their own personal journeys and professional careers, the power of the prevailing scholarly paradigms they encountered, and the realities of post-colonial Africa. Coming initially from Anabaptist service programs, the authors ultimately made wider contributions to comparative religion, church leadership, literature, music, political science, history, anthropology, economics and banking, health and healing, public health, extension education, and community development. The personal histories and reflections of the authors provide an important glimpse into the intellectual and cultural perspectives that shaped the work of Africanist scholars and practitioners in the post-colonial period. The book reminds us that the work of every Africanist is shaped by their own life stories.

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.