IBTS Baptistic theology

British Baptist pastor Andy Goodliff is a very active blogger and produces good material about trends in Anglo-American Baptist theology and information on new books from scholars.

An entry of 1 February is entitled “Trends and Directions in Baptist Theology”. The title may be slightly ambitious. Perhaps more apposite would be “some Anglo-American trends in Baptist theology”. He draws attention to what he calls the sacramentalists (“Colwell, Fiddes, Cross and others”) and a US group focused around Curtis Freeman. He also mentions the distinctive work of Paul Fiddes on reviving an interest in covenant. These are not unreasonable perspectives from a pastor living in the north west isles of Europe. Here in continental Europe at IBTS I believe there is another different trend of a baptistic theological perspective. This is formed around a notion of primary theology in gathering, intentional, convictional “thick” communities of faith which engage in life-forming practices. Building on insights from the Anabaptists and using conversant partners such as MacIntyre, Yoder, Stassen, Murphy and McClendon, Parush R Parushev, Lina Andronovienė, Jim Purves, Toivo Pilli  and others and now a host of young doctoral students are engaged in a European baptistic endeavour to affirm a theological stream outside of the magisterial protestant framework in which many others work.

– Keith