Readings in Baptist History
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Baptist Roots
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A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage
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Genetic History of Baptist Thought: Special Reference to Baptists in Britain and North America
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For databases of primary texts, see the Reformation page and the list of Online Resources. Below are some specialty sites for Baptist history and additional primary texts.
Following are several popular histories or historical surveys of the Baptist movement. Some will focus on historical beginnings, while other will focus on specific geographical locations or key thinkers.
Zwingli and Bullinger
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Selections from the writings of Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger, two lesser-known church reformers, are contained in this volume. Also included is an account of the life, work, and theology of each of these Swiss reformers of the sixteenth century. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.
The Anabaptist Story
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Four hundred seventy years ago the Anabaptist movement was launched with the inauguration of believer's baptism and the formation of the first congregation of the Swiss Brethren in Zurich, Switzerland. This standard introduction to the history of Anabaptism by noted church historian William R. Estep offers a vivid chronicle of the rise and spread of teachings and heritage of this important stream in Christianity. This third edition of The Anabaptist Story has been substantially revised and enlarged to take into account the numerous Anabaptist sources that have come to light in the last half-century as well as the significant number of monographs and other scholarly works on Anabaptist themes that have recently appeared. Estep challenges a number of assumptions held by contemporary historians and offers fresh insights into the Anabaptist movement.
Anabaptism in Outline
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Walter Klaassen gathered and translated this comprehensive book of selections drawn from writings and statements of 37 sixteenth-century Anabaptists. The selections are arranged under topics such as Baptism; Church; Nonresistance; Jesus the Word; Government; Cross, Suffering, and Discipleship; and Relations to Other Christians.
The Radical Reformation
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This 1991 book is a collection of writings by early Reformation radicals which illustrates both the diversity and the areas of agreement in their political thinking. The texts are drawn from the period 1521-7, centring on the German Peasants' War of 1524-6. The thinkers represented - Muntzer, Karlstadt, Grebel, Hut, Denck, and others - differed on important theological issues, yet all rejected the magistral reformation as serving the interests of society's elites. They advocated a strategy of Reformation from below, a sweeping transformation of society to the benefit of the lay commoner and the local community. With the start of the Peasants' War, radicals divided over the issue of the legitimacy of force. This division shaped the ways in which they confronted the failure of the Peasants' War and the alternate strategies for survival developed in its aftermath. Appended to the texts are a number of political programmes of the Peasants' War. These documents illustrate ways in which the radicals contributed to the uprising, and how the war itself led to greater clarity in the political theory of the radical Reformation.
The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists
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According to the scholarly and pastoral authors of this essay collection, sixteenth-century Anabaptists have much to teach Baptists and other Free Church evangelicals. A study of the lives and theology of evangelical Anabaptists encourages a reader to dig deeper into the Bible, count the cost of discipleship to Jesus Christ, and commit oneself to engaging the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The theological commitment of Anabaptists like Balthasar Hubmaier to the supremacy of the Word of God encourages us to live by the motto that "the truth is unkillable." The example of Leonhard Schiemer, who understood that following Jesus meant taking up the cross of Jesus Christ, prepares one for the joyous difficulty of a life of discipleship. The loving attitude, missionary fervor, and desire for communal integrity of leaders like Hans Denck and Michael Sattler draws us into a stronger commitment to share the gospel from an authentically Christian heart and life. Finally, such great contemporary leaders as Paige Patterson and Rick Warren have drawn upon the legacy of the evangelical Anabaptists to build great churches and seminaries. Their thoughts and stories are included here to encourage the recovery of the Anabaptist vision among Baptists and other free churches today. These papers also serve as a Festschrift honoring the lifelong work of Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in the study of the Radical Reformation. Indeed, he has inspired the recovery of the Anabaptist vision as a means of restoring New Testament Christianity.
Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers
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An important volume of scholarship, this book presents a collection of documents previously little known and inaccessible to the English-speaking world. This volume includes writings of the Radical Reformation--Anabaptist and Spiritualist--as well as three treatises by Juan de Valdes as a representative of Evangelical Catholicism. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.
