Succession History: Some Early Baptist Perspectives. (2nd January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bass, Clint
• Is Part Of: Baptist quarterly. Volume 47:Number 1(2016)
• Page Start: 8
• Page End: 16
• Publication Date: 2016-01-02
• Subjects: Baptists -- Anabaptists -- historiography -- succession -- Waldenses -- Cathari -- Lollards; Baptists -- Periodicals; 286
• DOI: Http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/0005576X.2015.1127062
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0005-576X

Abstract

Abstract : Most modern researchers have been dismissive of connexions between seventeenth-century English Baptists and the Anabaptists. It is often assumed that the eighteenth-century historian, Thomas Crosby, was the first to suggest a type of succession between the English Baptists and other religious radicals of centuries past. This article explores the historical theory of some early English Baptists who regarded the Anabaptists and other sects as their forebears. Some early leaders of the English Baptists did not embrace successionism, but others did, and their presence reveals an acceptance of Anabaptism that is seldom acknowledged in contemporary historiography.