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.

In the seventeenth century, English Baptists existed on the fringe of the nation's collective religious life. Today, Baptists have developed into one of the world's largest Protestant denominations. Despite this impressive transformation, those first English Baptists remain chronically misunderstood. In Orthodox Radicals, Matthew C. Bingham clarifies and analyzes the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution, arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be a part of a larger, all-encompassing Baptist movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of "Baptist" as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological stance as being in itself constitutive of a new collective identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their on-going project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals complicates our understanding of Baptist identity, setting the early English Baptists in the cultural, political, and theological context of the wider puritan milieu out of which they arose. The book also speaks to broader themes, including early modern debates on religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern actors established and defended their tenuous religious identities, and the perennial problem of anachronism in historical writing. Bingham also challenges the often too-hasty manner in which scholars have drawn lines of theological demarcation between early modern religious bodies, and reconsiders one of this period's most dynamic and influential religious minorities from a fresh and perhaps controversial perspective. By combining a provocative reinterpretation of Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth-century Baptists in decades.

Things that divide Christians act as a poor witness to the world. On such major schism is that of Baptism. However if we can't agree, the next best witness to the world is the manner of how we disagree. The two views explored here, paedo (or infant) baptism and adult (or believer's) baptism are often so entrenched that discussions can be based around prejudice rather than understanding. This classic book aims to eradicate the former and promote the latter. Do you know why Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists baptise babies? Do you know why Baptists find it impossible to understand why they do it? Do you know why most Baptists find it difficult to allow Paedobaptists to take communion or become church members? We owe it to the future health of the church, and its witness, to work out our differences in love before the world. This book looks at the biblical arguments for both views on baptism, show how these have been practised in church history and the place that baptism has in the church today. This book is based on the 1998 extended version of the 1977 classic. Donald Bridge and David Phypers approach this book from two different directions - respectively that of Baptist and Anglican. The common approach they bring is their respect of the others position as regards fidelity to scripture and faith.