Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices, by David Beale. Maitland, FL: Xulon, 2018. ix + 627 pp. $28.99.
David Beale, retired professor of Church History at Bob Jones University, has written a fresh look at Baptists of England and the United States using an excellent blend of primary source material and recent secondary literature to tell an old story with new insights and clarity. As the Baptist movement has now reached its fourth century, a single-author, single-volume history of the whole has become increasingly difficult. Leon McBeth’s The Baptist Heritage is now more than thirty years old and was written in the early years of the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. One might expect any new history of the whole to require multiple volumes or to exceed one thousand pages. This, however, was not Beale’s goal.
Beale offers the reader a narrowly focused book, limiting his material mainly to England and the United States, where the majority of Baptists emerged and developed. While the story itself is old, Beale sifts recent research to update the narrative on issues like the recovery of baptism in the early 17th century as well as providing new data on the story of Roger Williams among the seekers. He takes a view of Baptist origins that factors in its Anabaptist and Separatist antecedents while downplaying both Landmarkist and baptismal successionism.
The work of necessity does not stray far from the bounds of the title. This is a British and American story. But in the telling of this story, he chooses individual exemplars that highlight the growth and development of conservative Baptist ideals. Beale, it should be noted, writes from a fundamentalist vantage, and so he accentuates his appreciation for the doctrinal clarity of those Baptists that fall within that world or its antecedents. For Beale, theology in general and the Word of God in particular define what a Baptist is. As such, he shows affinity with Baptists who held to the Bible as inerrant and infallible, providing him with the best examples of Baptist life. Baptists looking for sympathy for the more modern view that “soul liberty” is the defining center of Baptist life will be disappointed.
The book divides nicely into two main sections. Rather than taking a strictly chronological approach, Beale starts with the British story and the roots of Baptist theology in its Anabaptist antecedents, which he carries through the General Baptist and the Particular Baptist details up to the time of Spurgeon and the fight over the Down-grade controversy. Beale then crosses the Atlantic and rehearses the same chronology, focusing on the developments of Baptists in the Colonies. He examines issues of religious liberty and theology, particularly the Arminianism/ Calvinism of Baptist life as well as liberalism and a smattering of details regarding the issue of slavery. In an appendix, he briefly discusses the Freewill Baptist movement. Another interesting feature of the book is a travel guide (Appendix 3) of interesting Baptist sites in England, Wales, and the United States, including what may be seen (markers, statues, historical objects, etc.) and in some cases directions or addresses to the location. Beale even puts a bit of this kind of information in the footnotes, not to cumber the notes with extraneous information, but to provide the reader with helpful tips should one wish to visit the particular place where the person lived or is buried, etc.
The work is primarily biographical, looking at individuals, pastors, and missionaries for the most part, so there is little mention regarding women in Baptist life. The book also does not cover the broader Baptist world, such as Scottish or Canadian Baptists or other international Baptist movements. Even the indefatigable Johann Oncken is mentioned only briefly. One could wish for an additional three hundred pages to have accomplished a global breadth, but Beale must not be faulted for what he failed to do. Beale is to be commended for what he did do. He gives the reader an up-to-date rendering of the main Baptist story, delimited to England and the United States, using the best available evidence. In this, he has left 21st century Baptists better off.
