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.

Malkhaz Songulashvili, former Archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia (EBCG), provides a pioneering, exacting, and sweeping history of Georgian Baptists. Utilizing archival sources in Georgian, Russian, German, and Englishatranslating many of these crucial documents for the first time into Englishahe recounts the history of the EBCG from its formation in 1867 to the present. While the particular story of Georgian Baptists merits telling in its own right, and not simply as a feature of Russian religious life, Songulashvili employs Georgian Baptists as a sustained case study on the convergence of religion and culture. The interaction of Eastern Orthodox, Western Protestant, and Russian dissenting religious traditionsamixed into the political cauldron of Russian occupation of a formerly distinct eastern European culturealed to a remarkable experiment in Christian free-church identity. Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia allows readers to peer through the lens of intercultural studies to see the powerful relationships among politics, religion, and culture in the formation of Georgian Baptists, and their blending of Orthodox tradition into Baptist life to craft a unique ecclesiology, liturgy, and aesthetics.

Since it was first published in 1947, The New Life has been a manual for those who are just beginning the Christian walk. It describes the basic beliefs of our faith and the distinctive features of the Baptist family. In this third edition, Judson Press has maintained the character and much of the content of this time-honored resource, while updating it to address the questions and needs of the current generation.

This work gives a detailed history and defense of the Advent Movement of the 1840's known as Millerism, the movement from which the Seventh-day Adventist denomination sprang. The book is based on original sources, William Miller's correspondence, contemporaneous books, pamphlets, journals, newspapers. The first half is devoted to the history of the movement, and the second half to an examination of charges made against the Advent believers, such as that they wore ascension robes, that the Millerite preaching filled the asylums, and so forth.

The central thesis of this book is that Baptists should recover the contemplative tradition with which they began in the early seventeenth century and to teach others how to live contemplatively in an age and culture far removed from contemplation. Through our four centuries, especially in America, cultural experience has reshaped and is reshaping our spirituality and worship in ways whereby God ends up as the one we expect to serve our programs and whims rather than the one we serve.

Think mid-twentieth-century Baptist evangelism, and the figure that comes immediately to mind is likely Billy Graham. But far removed from the glitz and glamor of televised crusades, what did typical Baptist mission field evangelism and worship really look like? In this latest volume in the Church at Worship series, Lester Ruth and Eric L. Mathis draw from a rich selection of primary sources to immerse readers in the worship life of Conservative Baptists in northwest Argentina from 1948 to 1964. Combining historical, theological, and practical perspectives, this book offers a vital educational resource for Christian ministers engaged in or preparing for cross-cultural ministry, introduces readers to a worshiping community that may be unfamiliar to them, and represents a significant contribution to liturgical history.

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.

Rhode Island can legitimately claim to be the home of Baptists in America. The first three varieties of Baptists in the New World - General Six Principle, Particular, and Seventh Day - made their debut in this small colony. And it was in Rhode Island that the General Six Principle Baptists formed the first Baptist association; the Seventh Day Baptists organized the first national denomination of Baptists; the Regular Baptists founded the first Baptist college, Brown University; and the Warren Baptist Association led the fight for religious liberty in New England. In Retracing Baptists in Rhode Island, historian J. Stanley Lemons follows the story of Baptists, from their founding in the colonial period to the present. Lemons considers the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration upon Baptists as they negotiated their identities in an ever-changing American landscape. Rhode Island Baptists, regardless of variety, stood united on the question of temperance, hesitated on the abolition of slavery before the Civil War, and uniformly embraced revivalism, but they remained vexed and divided over denominational competition, the anti-Masonic movement, and the Dorr Rebellion. Lemons also chronicles the relationship between Rhode Island Baptists and the broader Baptist world. Modernism and historical criticism finally brought the Baptist theological civil war to Rhode Island. How to interpret the Bible became increasingly pressing, even leading to the devolution of Brown's identity as a Baptist institution. Since the 1940s, the number of Baptists in the state has declined, despite the number of Baptist denominations rising from four to twelve. At the same time, the number of independent Baptist churches has greatly increased while other churches have shed their Baptist identity completely to become nondenominational. Lemons asserts that tectonic shifts in Baptist identity will continue to create a new landscape out of the heritage and traditions first established by the original Baptists of Rhode Island.

Rhode Island can legitimately claim to be the home of Baptists in America. The first three varieties of Baptists in the New World - General Six Principle, Particular, and Seventh Day - made their debut in this small colony. And it was in Rhode Island that the General Six Principle Baptists formed the first Baptist association; the Seventh Day Baptists organized the first national denomination of Baptists; the Regular Baptists founded the first Baptist college, Brown University; and the Warren Baptist Association led the fight for religious liberty in New England. In Retracing Baptists in Rhode Island, historian J. Stanley Lemons follows the story of Baptists, from their founding in the colonial period to the present. Lemons considers the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration upon Baptists as they negotiated their identities in an ever-changing American landscape. Rhode Island Baptists, regardless of variety, stood united on the question of temperance, hesitated on the abolition of slavery before the Civil War, and uniformly embraced revivalism, but they remained vexed and divided over denominational competition, the anti-Masonic movement, and the Dorr Rebellion. Lemons also chronicles the relationship between Rhode Island Baptists and the broader Baptist world. Modernism and historical criticism finally brought the Baptist theological civil war to Rhode Island. How to interpret the Bible became increasingly pressing, even leading to the devolution of Brown's identity as a Baptist institution. Since the 1940s, the number of Baptists in the state has declined, despite the number of Baptist denominations rising from four to twelve. At the same time, the number of independent Baptist churches has greatly increased while other churches have shed their Baptist identity completely to become nondenominational. Lemons asserts that tectonic shifts in Baptist identity will continue to create a new landscape out of the heritage and traditions first established by the original Baptists of Rhode Island.

Volume IX of the Baptists in Early North America Series provides a unique window into the inner life of the Sandy Creek Baptist Tradition. The records of Sandy Creek Baptist Church in North Carolina were destroyed by a fire, leaving a gap in the historical record. Baptists in Early North America--Abbott's Creek, North Carolina, Baptist Church, Volume IX, containing the records of the first church founded by Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall after their Separate Baptist movement took off at Sandy Creek, helps to fill this gap. Abbott's Creek, like many churches in the Sandy Creek tradition, experienced significant growth during the Second Great Awakening. This growth was followed by an increase in church discipline, then controversy, and eventually schism over the newly formed convention system among North Carolina Baptists. The church split in 1832 with Abbott's Creek Primitive Baptist Church continuing with the majority of members and Abbott's Creek Missionary Baptist Church forming a new congregation a few hundred yards away. The records contained in this volume begin in 1783 when the church was reconstituted following the Revolutionary War and continue through 1836. The records cover the ministries of George Pope and Ashley Swaim and the church's controversy over mission methods focusing on the work of Samuel Wait. The annotations included along with the transcribed minutes include information about the work of the Sandy Creek Baptist Association, of which Abbott's Creek was a founding member. An extensive bibliography and indexes are included.

James Wm. McClendon, Jr. was the most important "baptist" theologian of the twentieth century. McClendon crafted a systematic theology that refused to succumb to the pressures of individualism, grew out of the immediacy of preaching the text, and lamented the stunted public witness of a fractured Protestant ecclesiology.

This two-volume set mixes previously unpublished and published lectures and essays with rare and little known works to form a representative collection of the essential themes of McClendon's work. The first volume focuses on the philosophical and theological shifts leading to McClendon's articulation of the baptist vision. The second volume specifically elucidates the more philosophical themes that informed McClendon's work, including ways in which these themes had immediate theological import. Taken together, the set provides the most comprehensive presentation of McClendon's work now available, revealing the sustained and systematic character of his vision over the course of his life. These two volumes will provide scholars, preachers, and students with McClendon's radical, narrative, and connective theology.