For those of my friends who are into history, especially evangelical and Baptist history. This book celebrates the life work of Professor David Bebbington, Professor of Politics and Modern History at the University of Stirling.
When I was writing my first book in 1989-91 David was a generous mentor, the last word in courteous criticism and an enthusiastic supporter who instilled confidence and the sound disciplines of research and careful scholarship.
And I am only one of many, many people who have gained from David's own writing, his friendship and his gift for encouraging Christian scholarship and a discipleship of the intellect.
Amongst the strengths of David's work and its legacy are:
moving history to the centre of Christian intellectual work, as an essential discipline for engagement with the modern world.
demonstrating the crucial significance of history in understanding the nature of the church and its social, cultural and historical context
a clear foundation for historiography that both demonstrates the inevitability of presuppositions and points to a way of writing history that is not enslaved by those presuppositions – see his Patterns of History, still in print after almost 40 years
he has offered the most useful definition so far of what is meant by the term "evangelical" when used of the movement which is traced to the 18th Century Revivals and its subesequent development. Evangelicalism is marked by conversionism, crucicentrism, biblicism and activism. Evangelicalism is a diverse movement which is more than these four defining attributes, but not less. See his Evangelicalism and Modern Britain.
David is the pre-eminent Baptist historian of our own tradition, and of Evangelicalism, the larger context of the Baptist way of being the church.
the continuing stream of his own scholarship and leadership as evidenced in published writing, initiatives within Stirling and Baylor Universities, lectures, PhD supervisions, edited collections of essays and his own personal enthusiasm for exploring, expounding and retrieving the past.
In addition to all this David is a superb teacher – here is one of his lectures at a symposium celebrating 400 years of the King James Bible, his lecture begins at 5 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlBhE92uTbc
David Bebbington
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