“Reading James R. Coggins well-researched monograph, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separatism, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation …provides a window through which to understand the origins of English Baptists out of the Puritan Separatist movement of the early seventeenth century.” - London Lyceum
A 3 minute summary by David Bebbington - Credo
“Among Baptists, there is a longstanding myth that the essence of Baptist identity is the freedom to believe whatever you want as long as you baptize believers by immersion.” - London Lyceum
“Northern Baptists opposed slavery in the antebellum era and southern Baptists supported it….It’s not an invalid summary of the broad state of affairs, yet the reality was more complex. Consider the case of David Barrow.” - London Lyceum
“Just as Baptists disagreed on seemingly everything else, they did not view slavery in precisely the same way — even in South Carolina.” - London Lyceum
“It is generally known that Baptists in Georgia enslaved people. In fact, the Georgia Baptist Convention has acknowledged and repented of racism and slavery with resolutions in…. not so well known is how actively and extensively Georgia Baptists were involved in slavery and convict leasing.” - BPNews
“Baptists historically approved this theological judgment of Calvin and followed the principle even more closely than Calvin himself. Calvin wanted to lay aside all human inventions in the practice of baptism” - Tom Nettles
Read Part 1.
Naturally enough, we would like to know specifically what it was that Jessey and the 17th century English Baptists found objectionable in the KJV, and our curiosity is soon satisfied by his biographer, who gives a sampling of the kinds of things Jessey sought to remedy with a revised translation. Speaking of Bible translating in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Jessey’s view of it, Edward Whiston wrote:
Reprinted with permission from As I See It, which is available free by writing to the editor at [email protected].
(An earlier form of this study was published in Baptist Biblical Heritage, volume 2, no. 1, Spring 1991, pp. 5-8. It appears here in revised and updated form)
Aesop had his fables, the brothers Grimm had their fairy tales, and certain self-styled “defenders of the faith” have their doctrine of an infallible English Bible translation.
“At the turn of the 19th century, however, a decisive shift started. Baptists shed the sacramentology of their ancestors, embracing an exclusively memorialistic understanding of the Supper.” - TGC
