Baptistic Theologies, 2009

baptism. However, the Calvinist Fawcett, though later to be a friend of Taylor’s, directed him towards the General Baptists with their Arminian beliefs to find his spiritual home. The hand of God was surely in this as Taylor was used as an instrument both to bring evangelical zeal back to many General Baptist Churches and to found new General Baptist causes 122 Baptistic Theologies throughout the north and midlands of England. Taylor and his followers encouraged pioneering mission work in the growing cities of the industrial revolution with striking success. In this book we are able to see how revivalism develops and matures into a denomination with ordered ministry, doctrines and practices, a theological college and strong ties of interdependency. However, after more than 120 years, the amazing pioneering work of Dan Taylor and those who succeeded him, became the measured search for common ground with the Particular Baptists through such key figures as John Clifford. Rinaldi ponders the question of why it took so long for the New Connexion and the more openly evangelical Particular Baptists to come together fully in one Baptist Union. This reviewer is attracted to his notion of intimacy. Inherent to the New Connexion was a strong sense that the leaders in the churches knew one another. They held key elements of their life together - magazine, missions, college - through central funding, but by the 1880s the word ‘Baptist’ had come to be the stronger identifier than ‘General’ or ‘Particular’. Today, within our European Baptist family, both theological streams are present, but for us, too, baptistic identity is more important than one specific theological stream. This excellent book deserves to be studied carefully for the insights it gives us on the pioneering mission spirit and the desire to evangelise, rather than on spending too much time arguing over fine points of doctrine. Keith G. Jones, Rector, IBTS Brian Haymes, Ruth Gouldbourne and Anthony R. Cross On Being the Church: Revisioning Baptist Identity Volume 21, Studies in Baptist History and Thought Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008, 213 pp. European Baptists have long needed a contemporary book expressing our identity cogently in thought-through theology. Europeans are still generally reliant on books written in the 1950s to express who we are in classic terms. It will not do for us to describe and reflect today on who we are through the eyes of North American authors only. This is both the joy and the problem of this volume. It is written by three British Baptists who were all formed theologically in our oldest Baptist College at Bristol, England. The book is dedicated with gratitude to that college which was established in 1679. As such, it is in the ‘Bristol tradition’ of sound scholarship and of the mainstream of English Baptist life. The examples used to illustrate Baptist life are drawn mostly from the Baptist Union of Great B