Baptistic Theologies, 2009

le to preach and hold religious meetings without the oversight or permission of the Lutheran Church. The ‘Dissentersloven’ (Dissenters law) in 1845 was enacted, giving rights to dissenters to organise local Christian congregations, again giving life to missions and enabling the establishment of new congregations throughout Norway. The Lammers churches were a further step, and out of all these movements came the growth of Baptist witness under the leadership of Rymker. He was able to work at a time when there was freedom for the free churches and he established, even though in a small way, the foundation for congregations in Norway that embodied Baptist ecclesiastical distinctives. Pastor Alt Olav Kavli, MTh Student, IBTS, Prague. Book Reviews 121 Book Reviews Frank W. Rinaldi The Tribe of Dan: The New Connexion of General Baptists 1770-1891: A Study in the Transition from Revival Movement to Established Denomination Volume 10, Studies in Baptist History and Thought Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008, 264 pp. We European Baptists have long recognised and lived with the fact that Baptist beginnings, which we celebrate this year, have several foci. The 400 th anniversary of the foundation of a General Baptist Church by English exiles in Amsterdam is rightly celebrated amongst us. This denomination, reflecting other free church communities in the Netherlands, adopted a form of believing in the Arminian rather than the Calvinistic theological tradition. The Particular Baptists formed some years later in London, had a Calvinistic theological accent. Part of the genius of European Baptist life is that both theological streams could unite in 1891 in one Baptist Union of Great Britain and be found co-existing side by side in Europe today. For the General Baptists it was no simple journey from the bakehouse in Amsterdam to the uniting assembly in Burnley, Lancashire. On the way, a major part of them slipped into unitarianism. However, true to our baptistic genes, for other General Baptists the English evangelical revival associated with Wesley became the spark of new life, of revival, mission, growth and upsurge in what became known as the General Baptists of the New Connexion. Frank Rinaldi has placed us all in his debt by producing a contemporary study of the New Connexion. Your reviewer is especially glad that this study has finally transformed from doctoral thesis to book because it is my ‘home communion’. Rinaldi traces the enthusiasm of the movement focused in the conversion of Dan Taylor, the coal miner. Taylor, under the influence of a Wesleyan ‘Class Meeting’ was converted at the age of fifteen to an enthusiastic and evangelical belief, but differed from the Methodists, amongst whom he had found faith, on the doctrine of Baptism. Taylor, studying the Bible and living in the Pennine foothills near Halifax, turned to the Particular Baptist, John Fawcett of Hebden Bridge, for believer’s