The Christian Advocate And Scotch Baptist Repository

'The Search for a Common Identity' explores the process by which Scottish Baptists came to recognize the need for a union of Baptist churches in Scotland prior to 1869. This book identifies the major leaders in each of the three main Baptist streams in the early nineteenth century and shows how they came to the conviction that it was important for them to establish a common identity. At the heart of their unity was an enthusiasm for evangelism. The Baptist Home Missionary Society was formed in 1827. Its early successes demonstrated the wisdom of cooperation between the different Baptist agencies in Scotland. There had been three attempts to form a union of churches that failed because differences of perspective could not be reconciled. The principal achievement of the 1869 Baptist Union was in enabling Baptists with different theological opinions to come together to promote common practical objectives. In short, a shared sense of purpose led to the growth and establishment of the Baptist Union of Scotland.

In the second half of the nineteenth century Scottish Baptists like other Evangelical Protestant denominations were focusing more on things they had in common, such as a commitment to home evangelization and church-planting; providing a common fund to assist small and struggling congregations; the provision of theological education for the training of prospective pastors, together with the need to disseminate information between the churches concerning their progress in the work of the gospel. From the start of this Baptist Union in 1869 the numbers of churches and members grew steadily until 1935. It was a remarkable story of dedicated Christian service. Scottish Baptists came through two world wars, the social revolution of the 1960s, and the materialistic emphases of the 1980s with a significant degree of success in adapting their evangelistic activities to relate to their social context. There is little doubt that from the late 1980s the growing secularization in this country ensured that mission strategies adopted by these Scottish Christians were less successful than in previous decades. However, a revitalization of its work in the early years of the twenty-first century has given renewed grounds for hope for its work and witness in the coming years.

Some thought them dangerous, others credited them with recovering original Christianity. The Sandemanians, a sect with roots in the turmoil of eighteenth-century Scottish Presbyterianism, espoused a radical theology that influenced the development of American Christianity. Founder John Glas blended elements of fundamentalist New Testament Christianity with Enlightenment philosophy to create what he believed to be "the perfect rule of the Christian religion." The history and legacy of the Sandemanians are given full attention in these pages, which reveal the origins of the sect in Scotland and follow its greatest proselyte, Robert Sandeman, across the Atlantic to New England. Author John Howard Smith shows how such a minor sectarian movement could create so much controversy at the time of the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution. The churches Sandeman established were eventually crushed by the Revolution, their adherents scattered, never to grow into a denomination. The Sandemanians are little known today, yet elements of their theology played a key role in the future of American Christianity.