Description
This Baptist Studies/Christian History course will be taught by Jordan Steffaniak & Jonathan Baddley, and will run from September 25th through December 9th. The syllabus is available here.
This course introduces students to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century origins of those that have come to be known as English Baptists. It will focus on so-called Particular Baptists and will pay special attention to their Reformation and post-Reformation roots. Specifically, it will offer an introduction to the broad contours of English puritanism and will chart the rise of antipaedobaptism from within the ranks of the ‘godly’. Students will also encounter the key sacramental and ecclesiological debates that helped shape English Protestantism in this period. The course will provide students with the opportunity to engage critically with primary sources and will serve as a general introduction to the historiography of both English puritanism and eighteenth-century English evangelicalism. Students will also examine key figures, such as John Spilsbury, William Kiffen, Benjamin Keach, John C. Ryland, John Brine, John Gill, and Andrew Fuller to understand the breadth and diversity of baptistic congregationalism in early modern England.
Jordan Steffaniak (ThM, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is President of The London Lyceum, Editor of Hanover Press, and Research Fellow at the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture. He is a Recognized Instructor of Theology for Union Theological College and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Anderson University. He is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham (UK). He has a forthcoming book entitled Mere Classical Theism set to release from Lexham Press and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals such as International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, TheoLogica, Journal of Reformed Theology, Philosophia Christi, and Evangelical Quaterly.
Jonathan Baddley is a PhD student in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he earned an M.A. in History at Vanderbilt and an M.T.S in the History of Christianity at Harvard. His research is concentrated on affective theology and practical piety in the era of the Reformation(s). He also serves as the Reformation Theology Editor at the London Lyceum. Jonathan lives in Michigan with his wife and son.
Details
Online only, runs 10 weeks, meeting 2 hr./wk. via Zoom. Students will also have the option to participate in class discussion on the Davenant Common Room Discord server. Register to reserve your spot and schedule will be set after a poll of participating students; if the class time does not fit your schedule, you will be eligible for a full refund.
This is a graduate-level course. Although a BA is not a necessary pre-requisite for this course, students should come prepared to do graduate-level work.