With 16.3 million members and 44,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Church is the largest Baptist group in the world, and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Unlike the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists have remained stubbornly conservative, refusing to adapt their beliefs and practices to modernity's individualist and populist values. Instead, they have held fast to traditional orthodoxy in such fundamental areas as biblical inspiration, creation, conversion, and miracles. Gregory Wills argues that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has played a fundamental role in the persistence of conservatism, not entirely intentionally. Tracing the history of the seminary from the beginning to the present, Wills shows how its foundational commitment to preserving orthodoxy was implanted in denominational memory in ways that strengthened the denomination's conservatism and limited the seminary's ability to stray from it. In a set of circumstances in which the seminary played a central part, Southern Baptists' populist values bolstered traditional orthodoxy rather than diminishing it. In the end, says Wills, their populism privileged orthodoxy over individualism. The story of Southern Seminary is fundamental to understanding Southern Baptist controversy and identity. Wills's study sheds important new light on the denomination that has played - and continues to play - such a central role in our national history.

About the Author
Professor of Church History, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Reviews
This magisterial saga reads almost like a novel ... But the book's primary strength is outstanding historiography ... Wills tells Southern Seminary's unusual story in a gripping, inspiring way. * Andrew David Naselli, Themelios *



Book Information
ISBN 9780195377149
Author Gregory Wills
Format Hardback
Page Count 592
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1026g
Dimensions(mm) 243mm * 165mm * 44mm