New Festschrift including essays on Beddome

“A deep spiritual well”: eighteenth-century Evangelicals & their legacy has just appeared. It is a collection of essays celebrating the academic achievements of historian Grant Gordon, whose research on key eighteenth-century Evangelicals such as John Newton, John Ryland Jr, David George, George Whitefield and John Wesley has opened up fresh avenues for understanding these men and their times. The essays especially focus on Ryland and his family and the English Particular Baptist community to which he belonged. A number of essays deal with slavery, the impact of the American Revolution on British North America, pastoral vision and race and touch on key issues of concern to the Rylands and to Newton. I noted in oparticular two essays on Beddome, one by Dr Haykin and one by Dr Yuta Seki. Both appear elsewhere in different forms but it is good to see our friend's name out there.

The Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies

The first edition of a new journal of Andrew Fuller Studies is out this month. It includes articles on Fuller and Gill and I have contributed a Beddome piece reproducing his letters. It is an honour to be involved. More here.

Contents for new book

Contents

Contributors | ix

Preface | xi

1. Being Benjamin Beddome: A Biographical Study | 1 Gary Brady

2. “Glory to the Three eternal”: Benjamin Beddome and the Teaching of Trinitarian Theology | 34 Michael A. G. Haykin

3. Benjamin Beddome’s Christology | 51 Jeongmo Yoo

4. The Pneumatology of Benjamin Beddome | 89 Daniel S. Ramsey

5. “Such wondrous grace demands a song”: The Hymns of Benjamin Beddome | 118 R. Scott Connell 6. Benjamin Beddome and the Modern Question: The Witness of his Sermons | 142 Jason C. Montgomery

Bibliography | 173

Book on Beddome Coming Soon

It's been a long time in the making but a new academic book on  Beddome is coming soon.

Haykin on Beddome and the Bible

An anniversary piece on Beddome by Michael Haykin has appeared in the February Evangelical Times and can be accessed here.

Beddome Studies

Readers will be interested to see this post by Michael Haykin  here:

I hope to teach a doctoral course on the piety of Benjamin Beddome this fall. Here is the syllabus course description. Would appreciate prayer that the course would both inform and inspire:

 

“This course entails an advanced study in the history of piety in the English Particular Baptist community during the “long” eighteenth century (1688–1815). The special focus of the study is the life, ministry, and written corpus of Benjamin Beddome (1717–1795), pastor of the Baptist cause in Bourton-on-the-Water from 1740 till his death. His piety will be examined via his pastoral ministry, catechism, hymns, and sermons. The main goal of the course is to deepen the student’s ability to understand historic Baptist piety in situ and as a vehicle of spiritual and ecclesial resourcement.”

(Just love that last sentence. It's in America you understand. ;-))

Haykin on Beddome

Michael Haykin can be heard speaking on Beddome and the Bible here at Sermon audio.

Baptist Catechism

Beddome's Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist Catechism has recently been reprinted. It is available here.

Dr. James M. Renihan has said

The recent reprint of The Baptist Catechism has given families and study classes a helpful tool for memorizing the great doctrines of the Christian faith. Now, a hidden jewel, Benjamin Beddome's 'A Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist Catechism,' takes its place alongside the Catechism to give much needed assistance to the same families and classes. Beddome shows how the doctrines contained in the Catechism are founded upon Scripture, and explains them for all to understand. This is indeed a wonderful instrument to make skilled craftsmen from apprentices!

And Dr Tom Nettles

Beddome's exposition is particularlly helpful for doctrine classes in churches and can give substantial help to any leader that would want to convene such a study.

Dr Michael Haykin gives the background

During his early years at Bourton Beddome used Benjamin Keach's Baptist Catechism extensively, but felt the questions and answers needed to be supplemented so composed what was printed in 1752 as 'A Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist Catechism by Way of Question and Answer,' which basically reproduced the wording and substance of the catechism drawn up by Keach, but added various sub-questions and answers to each of the main questions.

It proved quite popular. There were two editions during Beddome's lifetime, the second of which was widely used at the Bristol Baptist Academy, the sole British Baptist seminary for much of the 18th Century. In the 19th Century it was reprinted once in the British Isles and twice in the United States, the last printing being in 1849.

British PBs

The best brief life of Beddome currently available is by Canadian church historian Michael Haykin. See Benjamin Beddome (1717-1795), The British Particular Baptists Volume 1 1638-1910, Particular Baptist Press, Springfield, Missouri. It was published in 1998 and is part of a three volume set. Michael Haykin was overall editor.

It has more recently been re-issued as a five volume set. See here.