Currently enrolled, on-campus Southern Seminary students are eligible for free registration to this year's Andrew Fuller Center conference. Due to the generosity of friends, there are a limited number of free registrations available on a first come, first serve basis. To receive this free registration you must sign up for in person at the Events Production office on the campus of Southern Seminary. All you need is your Shield student ID card. For details about the conference or (if you are not a current SBTS student) to register, please visit events.sbts.edu/andrewfuller.
Remembering Baptist pioneers
In Russell Re Manning, ed., 30-Second Religion (New York: Metro Books, 2011)—one of those mass-produced books to be sold at a discount—Manning cites John Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and Roger Williams as the key representatives of “Baptist Christianity” (p.110). It is curious that I came across this today as this past week in our Church History colloquium we discussed John Smyth’s The Character of the Beast, and I noted that it is strange that we as Baptists remember two men—Smyth and Williams—who were Baptists for less than a year. To be sure, they understood certain key principles of Baptist theology, and for that we rejoice. But: we also must prize consistency and perseverance. It strikes me that if we want to remember two pioneers, Thomas Helwys and John Clarke in Rhode Island are much better models.
Attend Andrew Fuller Conference for Credit
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is offering a "History of the Baptists" (26100 MD) Hybrid course in conjunction with this year's Andrew Fuller Center conference. The course, which will be taught by Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin with Steve Weaver, will include registration for the 2012 conference. The class will meet for four hours on Thursday evening before the conference and for two hours on Saturday afternoon after the conference ends. Supplemental video lectures will be watched online via Moodle before and after the class meets on campus Septemer 20-22, 2012. To view the syllabus, click here. SBTS students can sign up for the class on Moodle using course # 26100 MD. For more details about the conference, please visit events.sbts.edu/andrewfuller.
Baptists and knowing the times
For Baptists, faithfulness to the Gospel in England during the period from 1660 to 1688 meant outright conflict with the Anglican Church and inevitably persecution and imprisonment for Baptist leaders. Not surprisingly, this produced a legacy of animosity between the two bodies of churches: to the Baptists, the Church of England was a false church; to the Anglicans, Baptist congregations were guilty of the sin of schism. Fifty years after the Act of Toleration, when revival began to come to the Church of England, Baptists understandably viewed things through the prism of their history of dealings with the Anglicans and either acted as if the revival was a “flash in the pan,” as we say, or rejected it out of hand. Far too many Baptists sought to hold the line against the revival, and one of the results was hyper-Calvinism, and Andrew Fuller’s famous quip that the Calvinistic Baptist denomination would have become “a very dunghill in society” (Works [1845], III, 478) if God had not brought renewal into their ranks. Nota bene: this revival of the Baptists did not take place till the 1780s, a full fifty years after the revival began in Anglican ranks.
There is a tremendous lesson in all of this: the form that our loyalty to the Gospel takes can never be divorced from the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves and thus we need to be astute as possible in “knowing the times.”
Money according to Marianne Farmingham
“Money…cannot, must not, ought not, to be the greatest thing to a writer” (Marianne Farmingham). From her A Working Woman’s Life: An Autobiography (London: James Clarke, & Co., 1907), 275. Farmingham (1834–1909), a Baptist authoress, was a household name in many Victorian homes, and CH Spurgeon certainly regarded her as famous.
William Carey and William Ward, and being indebted to the Moravians
At time it appears that the debate about whether or not William Carey is rightly called the Father of the modern missionary movement is a seemingly endless palaver: of course, anybody who has read anything about the eighteenth-century awakening knows the Moravians were there first. But it was Carey’s name that was remembered through the long century that followed. Yet, it should never be forgot—though one fears many of the Victorian admirers of the English Baptist did forget—that Carey and his colleagues knew the extent of their debt to the Moravians. As William Ward exclaimed in 1801, after reading some Moravian missionary journals: “Thank you, Moravians! Ye have done me good. If I am ever a missionary worth a straw, I shall owe it to you, under our Saviour.” (Periodical Accounts, 2 [Clipstone, 1801], no.VII, 5).
"Andrew Fuller & His Friends" Conference Website Now Live
Registration is now open for our 2012 conference "Andrew Fuller & His Friends." The conference website features a conference description, plenary schedule, list of parallel sessions (which look superb!), registration and accommodation details. As always, several free books will be given away at this year's conference. The conference includes a fabulous banquet meal and all the amenities of the beautiful campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. We think it's a no-brainer. Register here.
Exciting News about the Works of Andrew Fuller Project!
It is with deep gratitude to God that The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies announces that the publishing house of Walter de Gruyter, with head offices in Berlin and Boston, has committed itself to the publication of a modern critical edition of the entire corpus of Andrew Fuller’s published and unpublished works. Walter de Gruyter has been synonymous with high-quality, landmark publications in both the humanities and sciences for more than 260 years. The preparation of a critical edition of Fuller’s works, part of the work of the Andrew Fuller Center, was first envisioned in 2004. It is expected that this edition will comprise twelve to fourteen volumes and take seven or so years to publish. Read the full details here.
New Audio of Recent Bible Conference
Dr. Haykin spoke over the weekend (May 19-20, 2012) in Dalton, PA at Grace Baptist Church's Spring Theology Conference. Audio is now online of the four lectures which Dr. Haykin gave at the conference.
The God who draws near: An introduction to biblical spirituality
Saturday, May 19 2012
“Andrew Fuller: Life and Legacy—A Brief Overview” in The Works of Andrew Fuller
Saturday, May 19 2012
Conference Audio Posted for "Religious Liberty and the Cross"
Audio of our most recent mini-conference, "Religious Liberty and the Cross: 1662 and the Persecution of the Puritans," is now online on the conference page. I have posted the links to the audio files below.
- Dr. Michael Haykin – “Puritanism Under the Cross” (MP3)
- Steve Weaver – “Baptists and 1662: The Persecution of John Norcott and Hercules Collins” (MP3)
- Dr. Tom Nettles – A Brief Summation and Concluding Word (MP3)
Audio from previous conferences can be accessed on the respective conference pages found here. Registration will be opening soon for our sixth annual two-day conference. See the Schedule and Call for Parallel Session Papers.
Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.
Biography of Caroline Holman, a desideratum
One of the most remarkable Baptists of twentieth-century Ontario was a woman, Caroline Holman, the widow of C.J. Holman, a prominent Baptist lawyer. Her husband played an important role in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, but died not long after. She lived into her nineties, dying in 1962. She was a staunch supporter of missions and prolific writer of Christian articles, and served as the first president of the Women’s Missionary Society, formed in 1926 during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy as the former Women’s Baptist Home Missionary Society of Ontario West divided that year. She was one of the few people who publicly disagreed with T.T. Shields (1873–1955)—which she did in the early 1930s—and maintained his respect afterwards. See The Regular Baptist Call: A Testimony, 36, no.9 (September 1962), for a remembrance of her life and service. A biography of Mrs. Holman is a desideratum.
Zaspel Speaks on Andrew Fuller
Fred Zaspel recently gave a talk entitled “Andrew Fuller: The Man Who Rescued The Baptists From Hyper-Calvinism” at Calvary Baptist Seminary in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. According to Fred, “It was very well received, and we’ve begun a tradition now—a series of these kinds of “Baptist Heritage” lectures each semester.” Here is the talk on Fuller.
Call for Papers for 2012 AFCBS Conference
We are currently accepting paper proposals for this Fall’s conference (September 21-22, 2012). We have a limited number of spaces, so please respond quickly if interested. These papers should be about 3,000-4,000 words in length and able to be delivered in approximately 20-25 minutes. Those interested in presenting need to e-mail the Center (andrewfullercenter@sbts.edu) with a title and brief outline of their proposal as well as a brief resume. The topic of papers for the parallel sessions must fall within the theme of the conference, namely, “Andrew Fuller and His Friends.” The plenary session schedule is available here. Parallel sessions may focus on Fuller's relationship with others or some aspect relating to one of Fuller's "friends." Some examples of papers already accepted are:
- Dustin Benge: “When a Friend Dies: A Funeral Sermon for Andrew Fuller by Joseph Ivimey.”
- Paul Brewster (SBC Pastor): “William Staughton: Andrew Fuller’s American Baptist connection”
- Jimmy Burchett: “Andrew Fuller as a Husband and Father”
- Chris Chun: “Fuller’s Friendly Lapsarian Debate with Samuel Hopkins”
- Roger Duke: "A Rhetorical Reading of Andrew Fuller's Sermon 'The Nature and Importance of an Intimate Knowledge of Divine Truth.'"
- Chris Holmes: “ ‘Not the Exact Model of an Orator’: J. W. Morris's Assessment of Andrew Fuller's Preaching Ministry”
- David Pitman: “Fuller’s Forgotten Friends: A Sketch of Andrew Fuller’s Non-Ministerial Friends”
- Dave Schrock: "James Haldane and the Particular Efficacy of Global Missions"
Submission of a proposal does not guarantee acceptance. The presenters of papers accepted for the conference will be notified promptly.
Presenters must register for the conference (details forthcoming) and are responsible for their own transportation, lodging, and meals.
This conference is held annually on the campus of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.
Free Mini-Conference on the 350th Anniversary of the Puritan Ejection of 1662
Religious Liberty and the Cross: 1662 and the Persecution of the Puritans
Date: Wednesday, April 18th
Time: 9:30 am - 12:00 pm
Location: Legacy Hotel, 3rd Floor (SBTS Campus)
Lectures:
- Dr. Michael Haykin - "Puritanism Under the Cross"
- Steve Weaver - "Baptists and 1662: The Persecution of John Norcott and Hercules Collins"
- Dr. Tom Nettles - A Brief Summation and Concluding Word
This conference is free and open to the seminary community.
Two Quotes from Oliver Hart
Two quotes from Oliver Hart (1723–95), the first Baptist theologian of the South, that deeply resonate with me:
“Grant, O Lord!... [w]hen I go to thy house to speak for thee, may I always go full fraught with things divine, and be enabled faithfully and feelingly to dispense the word of life.... Teach me to study thy glory in all I do.” (Oliver Hart, Diary, entry for August 5, 1754)“If I had not been willing to endure the scoff of the world, I should never have made an open profession of the religion of Jesus; much less should I have become a preacher of his much-despised gospel.” (Oliver Hart, Dancing Exploded [1778])
A Needed Balance
“Let us cultivate the most cordial esteem for all that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. …but let us aim, at the same time, to acquire and retain the most accurate conceptions of religious truth.” Who said this? None other than Robert Hall, Jr., who is sometimes seen as lax in the second of these two admonitions. I am so glad that Pastor Cody McNutt has done a PhD thesis on Hall at Southern, hopefully a progenitor of an intellectual biography of a man who was the first Baptist celebrity of the 19th century (that is, before Spurgeon). He defends it in a few weeks.
For the source of the above quote, see Hall’s “Introductory Preface to the Third London Edition” of his father’s Help to Zion’s Travellers (Boston: Lincoln, Edmands and Co., 1833), xv.
Christmas 1677 & 1679
While working through the Wapping Church minute book, I discovered this festive account from 1677. The church had voted to withdraw fellowship from Okey in June of the year. Apparently that was not okay with Okey. Okey had responded by praying for God to kill the pastor, Hercules Collins. The church took the following further action on Christmas Day 1677.
At the Church Meeting in ole Gravell Lane the 25th of December 1677 was John Okey Cut off and Excommunicated from all the priviledges of the gospel for the sin of lying and Revilling and for Refusing to hear the Church: together with his Invocating the God of Heaven to cut off and destroy Bro: Collings and saying also that he would be Revenged.
On a bit more pleasant note than the Christmas 1677 meeting, the Wapping Church took up a special collection for London pastor Benjamin Keach on December 25, 1679 in response to his recently having been robbed.
December 25th 1679 The Congregation in old Gravell Lane Did then Raise and give to Bro. Benj. Keach when he was Robed the Sum of Three pound five shillings
The church ultimately gave 3 pounds and eight shillings to Keach. On December 30th 1679, it was recorded in the minute book that: “Bro. Collings gave to Bro. Keach the Sum of three pound Eight Shillings which was gathered for him of the Church.”
The above was posted last week on my personal blog and the Hercules Collins site.
Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.
Remembering C.H. Spurgeon’s success and spirituality
In many ways, C.H. Spurgeon's ministry was nothing less than amazing: the crowded auditories that assembled to hear the "Cambridgeshire lad" in the 1850s and that continued unabated till the end of his ministry in the early 1890s; the remarkable conversions that occurred under his preaching and the numerous churches in metropolitan London and the county of Surrey that owed their origins to his Evangelical activism; the solid Puritan divinity that undergirded his Evangelical convictions-something of a rarity in the heyday of the Victorian era during which he ministered for that was a day imbued with the very different ambience of Romanticism; and finally, the ongoing life of his sermons that are still being widely read around the world today and deeply appreciated by God's children. What accounts for all of this? Numerous reasons could be cited, many of which may indeed play a secondary role in his ministerial success. For example, in a fairly recent biography of Spurgeon, Mike Nicholls emphasizes the importance of Spurgeon's voice to his success as a preacher. He possessed, Nicholls writes, "one of the great speaking voices of his age, musical and combining compass, flexibility and power."(1) Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), the son of one of Spurgeon's fellow Baptist pastors and who served as the Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916, testifies to this fact. Birrell records that when he went to hear Spurgeon preach once, the only seat he could find was in the topmost gallery, in what the English call "the gods." He was squished between a woman eating an orange and a man sucking peppermints. Finding this combination of odours unendurable, he was about to leave, when, he said, "I heard a voice and forgot all else."(2) But Spurgeon himself looked to quite a different source for the blessings that attended his ministry. In a speech that he gave at a celebration held in honour of his fiftieth birthday in 1884, the Baptist preacher forthrightly declared that the blessing he had enjoyed in his pastorate "must be entirely attributed to the grace of God, and to the working of God's Holy Spirit... Let that stand as a matter, not only taken for granted, but as a fact distinctly recognized."(3) In other words: behind Spurgeon's successes as a minister of the gospel was his walk with God.
- C. H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot, Oxfordshire: Baptist Historical Society, 1992), 37.
- Cited E.J. Poole-Connor, Evangelicalism in England (London: The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, 1951), 226-227.
- C.H. Spurgeon's Autobiography, compiled Susannah Spurgeon and J.W. Harrald (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), IV, 243.
Being defined by Benjamin Beddome
From the first time that he preached at the gathering of the Midland Association of Baptist churches in the 1740s, Benjamin Beddome was active till 1789. But he only appears to have written the Circular Letter once, and that was in 1765. The “masthead” that usually encapsulated the confession of the Association was replaced by a unique element that year which seems to have come from Beddome’s pen. Beddome identified himself and his fellow Baptists as those “maintaining the doctrines of free grace, in opposition to Arminianism and Socinianism: and the necessity of good works, in opposition to Libertinism and real Antinomianism.” There is more that needs to be said, of course, on other occasions, but this is very nice and succinct. Who are we? We are those who maintain the doctrines of free grace and affirm the necessity of good works. The phrase “the necessity of good works” coming hard on the heels of the statement “doctrines of free grace” obviously qualifies the term “necessity”: necessary proof of true conversion but not needed for justification.
Is the study of Andrew Fuller and Fullerism worthwhile?
Why devote a significant amount of one’s academic career to focus on a figure, namely, Andrew Fuller, who is nowhere near as well known as say, Athanasius, Anselm, Calvin, Owen of Edwards? Is it worth doing? A comment by the great historical theologian Geoffrey Bromiley has never left me in the many years since I read it: As a Christian academic, pour your energy into what is worthwhile. Is the study of Fuller and Fullerism worthwhile? The unequivocal answer is yes! Fuller exemplifies for me the best in Baptist thought and piety. He was rigorous in defence of the Christian faith and an unashamed Baptist (he did, after all, argue for a closed communion over against his close friends William Carey and William Ward). He knew that piety was the vital fire to ignite the coals of doctrine. His love for his family and friends was remarkable: Carey’s three words when he heard of his death sum it all up, “I loved him,” he said. He was catholic and reformed in the best sense of those terms, and could well be described as a reformed catholic theologian, as Owen and Benjamin Keach have recently been so described. He was the main disseminator of Edwardsean theology in the UK in the nineteenth century, and true to his mentor, Edwards, passionately missional. Little wonder, Spurgeon rightly commented to his son that Fuller was the greatest theologian the Baptists had in the nineteenth century.
Did he get everything right? No. But that does not diminish from his greatness. Spending time elucidating his thought is time indeed well spent.