Baptists have always utilized confessions of faith to express their understanding of the Christian life. Leon McBeth's Baptist Heritage describes several ways in which Baptists used confessions.

What ways were you particularly interested in?

Are these still valid uses of confessions today?

How can they be abused?

How do they relate to the other notion that Baptists hold called the "priesthood of the believer?"

The theories on Baptist origins have fascinated me since I first began to study Baptist history. I took William Estep's course on the Anabaptist Reformation and wrote a very basic paper on the relationship between Baptists and Anabaptists. Estep was a proponent of Anabaptist influence on the formation of both the General and Particular Baptists. Later on, in my dissertation on Primitive Baptists, I articulated the idea that the successionistic theory of Baptist origins was so popular among rank and file Baptists in the 19th century because they were intent to prove that they did not fall victim to the corruptions that had rendered the bulk of Christianity invalid. Baptists were pure because they had never lost the authentic expression of New Testament Christianity which they found expressed in the pages of the New Testament.

Are Baptists today interested in preserving New Testament Christianity? Is it necessary to do so? Do we need biblical authority for all our organizations such as associations and conventions? These are just some of the questions that can be raised after examining the different theories of Baptist origins. What others can you think of?

I really am a bowtie Baptist. Here I am wearing my "Vitruvian Man" bowtie from Beauties Ltd. of Vermont.