Baptists Doing Theology in Context

I've just spent the last four days in Manchester at the bi-annual Baptist Theological Consultation for British Baptists. Its a low-key get together of those who are interested in doing theology. There were about 40-45 of us and there were about 22 different papers/presentations as well as some plenary sessions by the Baptist College Principals on Explorations in Baptist Spirituality. I received a really good response to my paper on Towards an Inclusive Church, which was encouraging. Some of the papers will be available on a website soon and some will be published in an occasional journal, which I've found myself agreeing to edit.  The plenary sessions on Baptist Spirituality will be published as a book. This is an important gathering and will be interesting to see what impact some of the papers will have had in 5-10 years time. Anthony Clarke's paper on whether we should operate an open table at communion was execllent and hopefully this will appear in the book Baptist Sacramentalism 2 (to be published by Paternoster next year). The papers were a diverse bunch and so were constantly thinking and conversation. It was good to meet and get to know lots of new people - Chris Ellis, Ruth Bottoms, Richard Kidd (who blogs here) Anthony Clarke, Philip Clements-Jewery, Stuart Blythe among others.

Baptist theology is an exciting activity these days. Well it feels like it to me. I'll post  a link to the website when it re-appears and let you know about the journal when its out. There are some interesting collections of papers from past consultations if you're interested. There's the first (and currently) only edition of the occasional journal Theology in Context (ed. Steve Holmes, 2001) (I will be editing the 2nd edition of hopefully many more). This has some good papers including one on the story of Ishmael (by Malcolm Drummond), another on baptist eccesiology inclusive of children (by Paul Martin) and one on a trinitarian pneumatology and the church (by Graham Watts). There is also a collection of essays called Bound for Glory? God, Church and World in Covenant (ed. Anthony Clarke, 2002), with papers by Anthony Clarke, Rob Ellis, Steve Finamore and Tim Carter on the theme of covenant. There is also something called the Whitley Lecture. These are the title of the past lectures:

Power and Discipleship: Towards a Baptist Theology of the State, by Nigel Wright (1996)
Reinventing the Wheel: Women and Ministry in English Baptist Life, by Ruth Gouldbourne (1997)
A Shared Meal and a Common Table: Some Reflections on the Lord's Supper and Baptists, by Keith Jones (1998)
Seen and Heard: Reflections on Children and Baptist tradition, by Anne Dunkley (1999)
Violence, the Bible and the End of the World, by Steve Finamore (2000)
Confessing Christ in a Plural World, by Nicholas Wood (2002)
Tradition and Renewal in Baptist Life, by Steve Holmes (2003)
Liberating Ecclesiology: Setting the church free to live out its missionary nature, by Andrew Rollinson (2005)
Being Human: A Black British Christian Human's Perpsective, by Kate Coleman (2006)

You can get hold of anything mentioned either through the Baptist Union, or contacting any of the six baptist colleges: Regent's Park, Spurgeon's, Bristol, Northern, South Wales, and Scottish.

Comments

[Andy Scott]

Sounded like a good gathering with plenty of diverse input. Chris Ellis was my principal and MA supervisor up until recently. Would be interested in the website address as and when it's made available.
Take care, Andy.

[Margaret Sutherland]

I work in the area of educational inclusion. I'll be interested to see how this concept is discussed within a "church" context. Will your paper be available to download?

[andy goodliff]

Not sure yet ... I'm hoping to get it published. But I'll let people know where they can get hold of it, when it appears.

[Paul Fromont]

Looking forward to the book on Baptist Spirituality. I'm sure you'll be able to keep us appraised of its publication (winking)