John Murton on the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture
One of the great battles among twentieth-century Protestants has been the inspiration and authority of Scripture. However, debates regarding inspiration and authority had been engaged for many years prior. Even in the eighteenth century, prominent figures questioned the reliability of the biblical text as Enlightenment principles led some to question the miracles recorded in Scripture and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Even...
Planting by Pastoring
“Do I have what it takes to be a church planter?” That question plagued me in 2016 as I began to think about planting a church in Gallatin, Tennessee. Many of the church planters I knew inside and outside of my denomination were high energy, tech savvy, and had magnetic personalities. None of those phrases describe me. But I had had an interest in church planting since I was a college student. Now the opportunity to plant a church...
Samuel Richardson’s Use of John Murton and Roger Williams on Religious Liberty
In the past couple of years, a great deal of discussion has occurred regarding Baptist political theology. It has often focused on what Baptists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries taught on religious liberty and how Baptists today should approach religious liberty in post-Christian America. Some self-professed Baptists have even advocated for forms of Magisterial Protestantism, which is at odds with Baptist political theology...
Nine Early Baptist Texts on Religious Toleration Everyone Should Read
by Jesse Owens and Jake Stone One of the hallmarks of early English Baptists is their defense of religious toleration. I (Jesse) have argued in previous essays (here and here) that early Baptist arguments for religious toleration were neither dependent on Enlightenment ideals nor were they accidental to Baptist theology. These two points are closely related. First, early Baptist arguments for religious toleration were not dependent...
Christianity and Liberalism at 100 Years
In 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) preached a sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” at the First Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York.[1] In the decade prior to Fosdick’s sermon, Americans had suffered through the First World War, and American Protestants (particularly the Baptists and Presbyterians) were amid the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. Fosdick’s “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” was a call for...
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