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Baptists, the Holy Spirit and Corporate Worship – Doug Weaver, Baylor University

There are numerous ways to approach the topic of the Holy Spirit and Corporate

Worship. Someone could construct a theology of worship based on the recent voluminous

literature on the Trinity by contemporary theologians. Someone could zero in on one aspect of

worship such as music and put it in pneumatological perspective. Theologians, I expect, are best

tasked with those approaches. What I hope to do, as a historian of Baptist life, is to look at how

Baptists have talked about the Holy Spirit, especially with reference to worship or worship

practices. I am not attempting to provide a comprehensive overview of Baptists and the Holy

Spirit, which of course would be a book length treatment at minimum, but I do want to look at

various topics, especially those that attracted the attention of Baptists in the seventeenth century,

their first century of life.

I have found the material of early English Baptists, both the General Baptists and

Particular Baptists, intriguing regarding their willingness to speak frequently about the Spirit. I

assume that there is no need to travel the well-worn ground of describing the differences of

General Baptists and Particular Baptists on issues of election, predestination and the like.

Textbooks do that well and for this project, that discussion is not indispensable. I’ll also draw

comparisons with Baptists from colonial America, usually from the seventeenth century as well,

though I’ll slip in a few references to American Baptists of later centuries if they help elucidate

the ideas of their American predecessors. And finally, because my life as a historian was first

devoted to the study of Pentecostalism, and in recent days has incorporated that interest again, I

will take a leap, if not smoothly, at least understandably, from a focus on Baptists primarily in

their first century to what the interplay of Baptists and the Pentecostal tradition has looked like in

the last century.

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As you take this journey with me, you will recognize early on that I find the best way to

describe much of Baptist history as a Biblicist literal search to recover the New Testament

church, elusive as that may be.1 The earliest Baptists were sensitive to the importance of the

Holy Spirit in their attempt to embody the apostolic church. This focus on community, however,

also highlighted individual faith. In other words, I’ll rehearse with you a diverse story or stories,

a paradox, a creative interplay: and that is that Baptists, as they spoke of the Holy Spirit or

worship, or both, spoke of both the communal and the personal.

First, I’ll let early Baptists define the church. Baptist co-founder Thomas Helwys said

“that the church off Christ is a company off faithful people seperated from the world by the word

& Spirit off God being knit unto the Lord & one unto another, by Baptisme. Upon their owne

confession of the faith and sinnes.”2 In similar fashion, John Clarke, who has been called the

founder of American Baptists, said that the church was the “household of faith… a company of

faithfull ones, that are bought with the price of his blood, knit together in one by his Spirit…”3

The 1644 London Confession of the Particular Baptists defined the church as Helwys had:

members gave a visible profession of faith, then were baptized and joined to the Lord and to each

other by mutual agreement.4 Of course the existence of a covenant among members did not

alone demonstrate God’s presence. As Particular Baptist Christopher Blackwood cautioned, a

covenant between people did not mean it was a true church. While the church has a covenant,

“this covenant between persons does not give being to the church, for a company of Arians,

Socinian, Papists etc. may have a visible sanctitie or enter thus into covenant.”5 Clearly, the

Spirit and the Word were necessary for an authentic church to exist. Still, focus on the communal

nature of faith is easily apparent in early Baptist life. As Helwys indicated, “the Sunday

assembly is an external sign of the communal spirit of Christ and of reciprocal faith and

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charity.”6 The biblical declaration, “where two or three are gathered together” Christ is there,

was a Baptist refrain about church to state established opponents who questioned their existence.

The Spirit within each individual drew him/her to join together with others.

The earliest Baptists desired spiritual worship. Baptist co-founder, John Smyth, and the

subsequent Helwys congregation, argued that spiritual worship did not include reading from

books, so no use of translations in worship or even reading of scripture without comment were

permitted. This reaction was, of course, a strong disdain for what was considered to be the

Spirit-less liturgical practices outlined in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Smyth also

affirmed the possibility of regenerate professing believers receiving direct revelations from God.

Spiritual worship could mean many things for the Baptists of the seventeenth century and

the result was a series of “worship wars.” Some practiced footwashing in literal obedience to

John 13; others did not. Some argued against singing in church because they believed the

Bible’s injunction in I Corinthians against women to keep silent precluded singing as well as

speaking. These critics didn’t believe that the Spirit inspired “un-tune-able” voices. On the

other hand, Baptists eventually adopted congregational singing, following Benjamin Keath’s

practice of singing the Spirit-inspired words of the Scripture. Gradually, Baptists believed other

words could be sung as well. In describing early Baptists, it is common to refer to them as ‘five

principle” or “six principle” Baptists, referencing the principles listing in Hebrews chapter six.

Interestingly, early Baptists had a “worship war” over how to understand the reception of the

Holy Spirit in light of this chapter of the Bible. Did a believer receive the Holy Spirit during a

laying on of hands after baptism? Those who said yes were “six principle” Baptists, clearly

indicating that Spirit-led worship was for them a restoration of New Testament practices. Of

course the “five principle” Baptists would have said the same thing.7

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Early Baptist worship was both communal and individual. Both were indispensable; both

were intertwined. Said another way, while early Baptists embarked on the primitivist search for

the true New Testament church and being “knit one unto another” in voluntary covenant, it was a

community of faith that insisted upon and gave focus to the individual’s direct personal

experience of God’s grace. This personal dimension reflected and developed amid a significant

element in the larger Puritan culture that gave heightened emphasis to the conversion experience

as a sign of the visible saint and highlighted the primacy of conscience in an era of dissent and

revolution.

For Baptists, the dual focus on both the individual and the communal could be seen in

believer’s baptism. Believer’s baptism was a radical act of individual conscience and faith.8 It

embodied individual conversion; it was a voluntary, personal, profession of faith. Believer’s

baptism was also the visible entrance to the congregation of faith and was thus a rite of initiation

and a communal act of incorporation into the visible body of Christ, the local congregation of

regenerate believers. The practice of infant baptism denied the necessity of personal religious

experience, Baptists believed, and it adversely affected the purity of the body of believers.

The basis for believer’s baptism was a personal, heart-felt experience of God. Readers of

early Baptist pamphlets were thus exhorted to have an inner heart experience and enter into a

“personal covenant with God.” As Particular Baptist Thomas Collier said, the law of the New

Testament must be written in the heart.9 In opposition to Massachusetts Puritans, Boston

Baptists Thomas Goold and William Turner affirmed that “Christ dwelled in no temple but the

heart of the believer.”10

This heart experience must, of course, be born from freedom rather than

coercion or from so-called proxy faith. Particular Baptist Samuel Richardson noted, “Because it

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is Gods way, to have Religion free, and only to flow from an inward principle of faith and love;

neither would God be worshipped of unwilling worshippers.”11

At times this personal experience was described as the soul in direct communion with

God. General Baptist George Hammon wrote that “that the soul of man should be free and

acknowledge no master but Jesus Christ.”12

With mystical flair, Thomas Collier proclaimed that,

“the Lord Jesus with the free consent of the gracious soul, sets up his Kingdome in the heart so

that when Christ sayth, My son, give me thy heart: Lord take my heart, sayth the soule, dwell

there, rule there, set up thy Kingdom there: so that you see Christ doth not rule as tyrant in the

soules of his people, but with the free and full consent of the mind of the person in whom he

reigns.”13

This direct relationship with God was possible because of God’s grace; and direct

because God alone was “Lord and lawgiver to the soul.” Only Christ, not any state or religious

hierarchy, reigned in and over the souls of the believing saints. When Baptists, even Baptist

women like Ann Trapnel, on occasion declared to have Spirit-led visions from God, these

intimate experiences derived from, and were accepted by others because of, their belief in a

personal direct relationship with God.

The focus on individual faith was also cast in the language of the Holy Spirit. Early

Baptists believed they were a Spirit-led people, and it was the Spirit which justified and

emphasized the role of individuals and the communal nature of the Church. Thomas Helwys

contended that the Spirit was the church’s authentic episcopacy. According to his colleague,

General Baptist John Murton, Christ was the church’s monarch, and the Holy Spirit was God’s

deputy.14

As one scholar has said about Baptists and some other sectarians of the seventeenth

century, spiritual authority came via personal experience.15

Through the affirmation of the

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priesthood of all believers, the Spirit made every person equal before God; there was no

hierarchy of importance. The Holy Spirit worked through the believer, enlightened the

conscience and worked through the Scriptures.

From this Spirit-led basis, Baptists allowed for individual and communal expression of

reading the Scripture. Baptist catechisms exhorted all Baptist believers to read the Scriptures. In

a refrain also seen in the better known writings of American Roger Williams, Samuel Richardson

retorted to opponents, ‘why let us have Bibles if we cannot read them ourselves?’16

The

Scriptures, General Baptist Henry Denne contended, were not granted authority because the

Church had bestowed them authority but they were accepted experientially through the “inward

assurance of the Spirit.”17

Baptist dissenters imprisoned for their faith certainly were there

because of their right to private judgment when it came to spiritual matters. Seventh Day Baptist

Francis Bampfield spoke of “Spirit-illuminations” and said he answered only to King Jesus, “the

lawgiver to our souls” and the “only Lord to our conscience”—both common Baptist refrains.18

The preaching of the Word of God clearly had a personal focus for the earliest Baptists;

but it had no less a communal focus. That was their expectation for restoring an authentic New

Testament church. In good Protestant fashion, an affirmation of sola scriptura and the preached

Word were central to worship. The spiritual egalitarianism seen in believer’s baptism and in

reading the Scripture was also evident in preaching. Baptists certainly did not ignore church

order and ordination, especially as they grew, but preaching embodied individual and communal

expressions of faith. Thomas Helwys said that every man could preach, not just the hierarchical

clergy. Christopher Blackwood exhorted those who preached to “preach out of your own

experience.”19

Both John Murton and American Obadiah Holmes also tied preaching to personal

experience. They said that God had made the Scriptures “plain” and thus anyone who “fear(ed)

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and obey(ed)” God could read and understand them under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Murton and Holmes further revealed their spiritual egalitarianism by highlighting how the poor

and despised were often those who understood the Scriptures. Educated hierarchical clergy

should not automatically be followed in matters of faith because they could err like all men.20

In

sum, these early Baptists emphasized a Baptist tendency to emphasize the interrelatedness of

Word, Spirit, and experience.

In addition to Baptists clearly following the Protestant affirmation of the reading of

Scripture individually, they also knew that Scriptures were the source of worship for the Church

and were to be expounded in a communal context. In the earliest years, at least, Baptists

followed Puritan predecessors and allowed the practice of prophesying. In some Puritan contexts,

prophesying meant that several young ministers would preach in one setting and dialogue would

ensue about the meaning of the biblical text. In some Baptist settings, prophesying meant that

any Spirit-led individual was allowed to speak after the sermon. The practice of prophesying

evidently existed in Smyth’s and Helwys’ congregations. In the 1640s, General Baptist Edward

Barber spoke extensively about allowing individual believers gifted with prophecy to speak and

exhort about the Scriptures at the church assembly. He cited the classic Spirit-egalitarian

passage, Acts 2, to declare that all could speak as led by the Holy Spirit regardless of their socio-

economic or educational background. To buttress his argument, in good anti-hierarchical fashion,

Barber noted that human learning was not necessary to have the Holy Spirit. In fact, when a

minister did not let him speak in church, Barber lamented that “this tying of the Spirit of God

only in the mouths of the Black coats, (was) one of the greatest innovations that was ever

invented.”21

Barber noted that King David was a shepherd; Peter, James, and John were

fishermen; Paul a tentmaker; and Jesus a carpenter. The Spirit thus gifted all types of persons to

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preach. Liberty for individuals to prophesy, as General Baptist Thomas Grantham noted, was a

sign of the primitive New Testament church.22

On the American side, again, John Clarke and

Obadiah Holmes testified that the state supported church in Massachusetts denied prophecy and

thus attempted to coerce faith from dissenters.23

While a few early Baptists claimed Spirit-led

visions and claimed the priority of Quaker-like spiritual enthusiasm over Scripture, most did not.

Rather, the Spirit-led individual expressions of faith often provided a shared communal source of

unity and fellowship to a Baptist congregation. As one scholar noted, “Their respect for the

liberty of conscience fostered tolerance for diversity of opinion, and their democratic polity

encouraged greater participation of the memberships in the governance of congregations.”24

Baptists have historically been Word/Spirit based and not a Eucharistic-based worship

community. They have been Word/Spirit based. For example, the 1644 London Confession

mentioned preaching in six articles but failed to directly mention the Lord’s Supper even once.25

That is not to say that the Lord’s Supper has not been integral to worship or a time to experience

the fellowship of the Spirit. From the outset, Baptists were Protestants who practiced two

ordinances or sacraments. How often it was practiced in worship varied. Much early concern,

even into the twentieth century, was over the question of open or closed communion. Both had

their adherents though the majority of Baptists, up until the ecumenical openness of the twentieth

century, insisted upon closed communion. These Baptist feared that open communion was a

Trojan horse, that is, if those without believer’s baptism participated, they undercut the purity of

authentic worship. Many Baptists also argued that giving any sacramental or grace-giving value

to the Lord’s Supper was inevitably connected to sacerdotalism, which they considered to be the

exaltation of the clergy as the necessary mediators or dispensers of grace. For example, Obadiah

Holmes said he practiced the Lord’s Supper because Christ commanded it, but in an apparent jab

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at the state supported clerical hierarchy in Massachusetts, said that his “rest is not in them,” that

is, not in the authority of a church or its ministerial elite, or its ordinances, but in Christ.26

For

non-sacramentalists, the meaning of the Supper was often in terms of symbol; it was a memorial,

done in remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross.

At the same time, recent scholarship has noted that some early English Baptists like

General Baptist Thomas Grantham never abandoned a sacramental meaning for baptism or

communion. Thus, these scholars have said that the Lord’s Supper was not a memorial that

ultimately reduced the sacrament to a human act of memory but was in fact a vibrant divine-

human encounter and avenue for the presence of the Spirit in worship.27

What is revealing to this study, regardless of the diverse views surrounding the Lord’s

Supper, was that it was both personal and communal in Baptist worship. The Lord’s Supper

could be a time for each believer to commune personally with Christ, but in observing it as a

congregation, as twentieth century theologian from the American South E. Y. Mullins noted,

they participated together in a shared, dramatic memorial of Christ’s death. The Lord’s Supper

was a communal act of worship and fellowship guided by the Spirit, as all worship was.28

Whatever their views of sacramentalism, Baptists have generally not allowed individual, isolated

times for the sacred ritual nor was its practice allowed outside the congregation. In other words,

the Lord’s Supper was a church ordinance/sacrament. Interestingly, those who insisted on closed

communion gave as one of their reasons for their exclusivism that the local congregation, not the

isolated person, decided who took communion with them; it was observed only in the context of

local church discipline in which a person’s profession of faith could be ascertained.29

As many of the references used to this point have indicated, early Baptist identity,

personal and communal, was intertwined with persecution and dissent from state-supported

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religion. Consequently, Baptist life and worship was inextricably tied to matters of conscience.

Baptists believed that authentic Spirit-led worship was free, voluntary and un-coerced; individual

and communal conscience must both be unfettered before God.30

What was the conscience? General Baptist Leonard Busher said the conscience was “the

spiritual seat and temple of God”; John Clarke said it was “a sparkling beam from the Father of

lights” and in striking language, “the voice of each man’s conscience being to him the voice of

God.” Both men said that religious persecution that attempted to coerce worship against the

conscience was a “tyranny of the soul.” Christopher Blackwood also affirmed conscience to be

“a work of the Spirit.”31

Reverence for the God-given conscience, practically speaking, meant

that unity did not mean a forced uniformity; exhortation in worship should focus on persuasion.

The conscience was not an unbounded entity in worship, however. It was answerable to

the “word of truth,” declared John Murton and John Clarke.32

Even John Leland, the radical

eighteenth century American religious liberty gadfly often criticized today for being captive to

an Enlightenment driven individual autonomy like that found in American president, Thomas

Jefferson, concurred. Leland was a Jeffersonian but also a Baptist Biblicist who affirmed that

conscience was sacred because it was a “court of judicature, erected by God in every human

breast.’ Faith was thus personal. At the same time, Leland said the conscience was not perfect

because it was defiled by sin; thus, a person’s inner spiritual court could be mistaken. To operate

faithfully and justly, conscience had to be subordinate to the “word of God” and the authority of

Christ. In other words, faith, to be genuine, had to have a conscience that was free to follow the

Spirit-inspired Scriptures and actually did so.33

Consequently, conscience usually meant that Baptists were tolerant of worship diversity

to the degree they deemed the Scriptures allowed it or because they recognized humans were not

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infallible interpreters of it. For example, Edward Barber, one of the first to advocate for

immersion baptism still said, “on dipping, let every wise man judge.” Christopher Blackwood

said that in his church if a member “with good conscience” thought he could still listen to the

preaching of Anglican parish ministers, then the congregation would “leave these persons to

themselves, without any threats of censure, not making our consciences…the rules of the men’s

practices.” Allowing individual conscience did not mean that all views were considered valid, of

course. Blackwood, for example, concluded that those who still desired to hear Anglican

preaching in the 1640s were most likely acting out of “compliance to temporal ends.”34

Conscience was clearly personal; but it was also communal. Baptists were individualistic

in their dissent on occasion as they opted to obey God rather than man as they understood their

situations; but these individual believers were also part of the egalitarian priesthood of believers

in covenant together under the Lordship of Christ. And this meant, for them, commitment to

congregational polity and discipline as fundamental parts of being a worshipping New Testament

community.

Church discipline, for example, was to keep the body of Christ pure and on occasion,

wayward individuals needed to be disciplined. Baptists did this differently than others, they

insisted, by not resorting to the carnal weapons of clerical or state coercion. Moreover, they were

not to be bound by external authorities like kings or civil magistrates who were incompetent to

judge spiritual matters. Doctrinal beliefs, or judgments about the biblical nature of worship

practices, were determined by communal, congregational decision. The process was

democratic—each believer, or in their day, perhaps each male believer, was to have a voice—but

the decision was not simply by majoritarian rule. Rather, the communal voice of the majority

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was seen as a direct response to nonviolent spiritual methods: the leading of the Holy Spirit and

the Lordship of Christ as found in the divinely inspired Scriptures.35

The American Baptist religious liberty advocate of the latter eighteenth century, Isaac

Backus, is revealing here. Backus, like most Baptists in America, affirmed that the church was a

voluntary society of converted individuals in covenant together. There were to be no “pressed

soldiers” in the church. To ensure this regenerate nature of the church, verbal confession of

experiential faith was required, not written confessions that were sometimes altered by ministers

of the Massachusetts state church. Backus affirmed the communal nature of congregational

church polity. He said that the state supported clergy had modeled themselves after the state;

meaning, they had developed a hierarchical leadership and let one leader speak for the whole. In

contrast, Backus said, in Baptist life each believer in the local church had the Spirit-led ability to

judge. Baptists worked for a consensus of Spirit-led believers.36

E Y Mullins, Southern Baptist leader of the early twentieth century, echoed Backus.

Known for his focus on soul competency—the God given ability of each person to have direct

relationship with God—Mullins also championed the church as a voluntary spiritual community

of faith. He asserted that the church was a spiritual community grounded in a common personal

experience of grace, a common loyalty to the Lordship of Christ and a common commitment to

the authority of Scripture. Mullins concluded that “individual believers were inevitably drawn

together by spiritual affinity in fellowship; their renewed spiritual natures then impelled them to

associate themselves together as a church.”37

If believers were led by the Spirit, there would be a

consensus of the competent.

Did it always work this way? Of course not. Individuals, or a group within a

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congregation, might, because of conscience, stand over against the majority or over against the

church. B. H. Carroll, another twentieth century American Baptist, said at times believers would

have to speak a word over against the corporate word of the Church. His example reflected his

commitments: he said that if a church was opposed to evangelistic mission work, then the

individual believer must follow conscience and obey the Scriptures, not the mistaken

congregation.38

At the same time, dissent, even if a person’s contention was that he was being

true to the Spirit and Scripture, was usually allowed but might be rejected and the so-called

Spirit-led believer could be dis-membered. For Baptists, freedom often meant diversity in the

practice of their beliefs and their worship.

The sacredness of a free conscience, then, was part of the primitivist restoration of the

New Testament church. Significantly, it often revolved around issues of judgment, particularly

the Last Judgment of Christ at the end of time, which many Baptists thought was imminent in the

seventeenth century. Judgment had a communal aspect—it was for everyone—and genuine

Christians expected to be rewarded with the blessings of heaven. But it was also personal and

reflected the spiritual egalitarianism of Baptist life: each person would be judged according to his

or her deeds. No one would be exempted; those with earthly titles or some socio-economic status

had no advantage. Each person stood level before Christ at judgment (though Baptists were

confident God was on the side of the poor and those who suffered). For example, Particular

Baptist Hercules Collins warned anyone with a troubled conscience that death and judgment

were in pursuit. At the Last Judgment, the conscience and the Spirit would bear witness against

them. And colonial American John Clarke added that Christians, because they were to practice

the golden rule and will answer to Christ at the Last Judgment, should never violate another

person’s conscience.39

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Discussions of the judgment and conscience were usually in the context of the

compulsory worship enforced by the King and his “anti-Christ” state-supported religious

hierarchy. While there were exceptions, as mentioned earlier Baptists preached that the King had

no role in worship or other matters of faith. In words preceding E Y Mullins’ use of the phrase

soul competency, Samuel Richardson said that the King was not competent to judge matters of

faith. That was the royal prerogative of King Jesus at the Last Judgment. When the state coerced

worship, it raped the conscience, said Edward Barber. God “competently gifted” believers,

Joseph Hooke said, but not to be judge over one another. Jesus Christ was Lord of the conscience

and only Lawgiver to the soul. Conscience, then, must be free for believers to worship God from

the inner depths of the soul.40

A free conscience was integral to authentic worship and tied to each believer’s

relationship to God. Believer’s baptism was an act of conscience. Believers were also in

communal relationships—they were to be in covenant with each other. But ultimately or

eschatologically, each person answered to God. John Murton’s views on the subject actually

represent a strikingly extensive, robust roll call of Baptist leaders from both England and in

America—name after name that I could mention especially in the seventeenth century but even

beyond into the twentieth—when he said that each person must “give account of himself to God”

since each person is responsible for his spiritual life. In sum, freedom of worship according to

conscience was imperative in preparation of meeting King Jesus face to face at the Last

Judgment.41

It should be apparent by now that I consider the seventeenth century and even the

eighteenth century to be intriguing, fruitful and beneficial for study of the role of the Spirit in

Baptist life and worship. However, I need to give some attention to the events from the last 100

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plus years because of their influence and because they fascinate almost all observers: that is, the

explosion of interest in the explicit longing for the presence of the Holy Spirit in the experience

of worship. I am, of course, talking about the rise of the Pentecostal tradition. While this story

has a completely different historical context, Baptists in each period believed in “Spirit-led”

worship and again, both individual and communal dimensions were involved.

Observers know that the Pentecostal tradition had strong roots in the Holiness Movement

of the nineteenth century. The movement is correctly associated with Methodism, but other

denominations were affected, even Baptists. As one holiness Baptist said of his critics, “The

Devil said Methodism, the Lord said gospel truth.”42

It is difficult to determine the numerical

strength of the Holiness Movement among Baptists in America; still, the movement attracted

some influential pastors and evangelists, especially among Northern Baptists, who spoke

strongly for the need of a return to Acts 2 in Baptist worship. They believed that Pentecostal

piety was the key to restoring the New Testament church. In 1857, Henry Fish of New Jersey

asked, “Why may Christians not be filled with the Holy Ghost” as they were in primitive times?

This was possible, Fish preached, because the Holy Spirit was the “grand animating agency in

the Christian Church” who would sanctify the soul, eradicate sin and create inner purity. Fish

told preachers that pulpit power came from the Spirit and nowhere else. In good experiential

Baptist fashion, he called for a renewed focus on the Holy Spirit because “it requires much less

vigilance to maintain a sound creed than a sound heart.”43

The Holiness movement’s focus on a Holy Spirit baptism was not equated with speaking

in tongues—that connection did not come until the onset of Pentecostalism at the beginning of

the twentieth century. Holiness advocates contended that conversion was a believer’s first grace-

filled religious experience but that a second blessing was available and needed for “full

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salvation.” This second deeper experience was referred to with multiple designations like entire

sanctification, holiness, a baptism of the Holy Spirit, entire consecration, the higher Christian

life, or to use the Wesleyan phrase, perfect love. Baptist holiness advocates generally used all of

these terms to speak of the possibility of “full salvation” or the fullness of the Spirit.

This explicit focus on the Holy Spirit surely highlighted personal holiness for individual

believers. The role of the church and its worship was to nurture this biblical call to personal

holiness, according to Richard Fuller of Baltimore.44

There could be “tarrying” services, special

altar calls for holiness in the same way that there were altar calls for conversion. In worship,

holiness should be preached so that each believer could receive the sweet “rest of faith” and the

“abiding peace of Christ” that only the fullness of the Spirit would bring.45

Worship also was to

inculcate holiness so that believers would resist participation in the sins of the world. Christ

gave the gift of the Spirit; believers only had to believe by faith in order to receive.

Holiness Baptists like Fish, John Q. Adams46

and Absalom Earle47

, called one of the most

popular evangelists in mid-nineteenth century America, however, emphasized a communal

aspect of holiness as well. Because of the priesthood of all believers, the baptism of the Holy

Spirit was for all believers, rich or poor, clergy and laity. Just as conversion provided a common

experience that formed the basis for believer’s baptism and church membership, the second

blessing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit would unify believers of diverse perspectives, these

Baptists asserted. Unity had not come through creeds or the diverse understandings of

ordinances or sacraments, they contended. But genuine spiritual unity was available in the

common dependence upon and the common experience of the Spirit.

Holiness advocates argued that the reception of the Holy Spirit had one primary biblical

purpose, and it was most compatible with Baptist DNA. Based on Acts 2, this baptism of

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holiness was given by the Spirit for an “enduement of power,” meaning, a power to be witnesses,

a power for mission. Baptists evangelists like Absalom Earle and Emerson Andrews said that

revival worship that nurtured holiness teachings must also be characterized by an intensity for

the evangelism of sinners.48

Only Christians baptized in the Holy Spirit were really effective in

preaching or evangelism, they thought. A. J. Gordon, perhaps the most famous Baptist advocate

of holiness, said that the enduement of power equipped worshippers for consecrated service and

missions in fulfillment of Act 1:8 in order to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Gordon

argued for a different kind of holiness, however. He said that sanctification was a process not

completed until heaven; it was not an instantaneous experience in or outside a worship service.49

Of course, the focus on Holy Spirit baptism in worship didn’t always unify believers just

as other doctrines or practices have not as well in Baptist or Christian history. While it was

possible for a Baptist to yearn for the baptism of the Holy Spirit during the Holiness movement

and remain a Baptist, it was rare to be both Pentecostal and Baptist, though the creation of the

Pentecostal Free Will Baptist denomination in North Carolina stood as an exception.

Pentecostalism began in 1901 but the movement took off with the ministry of African-

American, William Seymour, and the Azusa Street revival of 1906. Pentecostalism was

characterized by faith healing, a belief in the imminent end of time, an affirmation that speaking

in tongues was the sign of being baptized in the Holy Spirit and exuberant worship hoping for

direct experiences of the Spirit through revelations and prophecies. Baptist denominations

usually strongly resisted Pentecostalism but perhaps we should not be surprised that numerous

Baptists were drawn to the explicit emphasis on the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts in Pentecostal

worship. Worship was experiential; obviously compatible with most Baptist DNA.

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Pentecostalism’s message that the Holy Spirit baptism was an enduement of power for

missions to preach the gospel at the end of time—buttressed by the assertion that the gift of

tongues was a miracle to speak in other languages to prospective converts in other nations—was

surely attractive to some mission sensitive Baptists. Whatever the case, some of the earliest

leaders of the new Anglo denomination, the Assemblies of God, were former Baptists. And

many early pioneers in African-American groups, for example, Charles Mason of the Church of

God in Christ, were former Baptists. Baptists today have little idea how many Baptists were part

of the early Pentecostal story.

When the Pentecostal focus on the Holy Spirit moved out of Pentecostal denominations

in the 1960s into older mainline groups, both Protestant and Catholic, what has been called the

charismatic movement was born. Since that time, Baptists have found themselves on both sides,

pro and con, of what can be called the pentecostalization of religious worship. Some Baptist

fully adopted Pentecostal theology and became what are called “full gospel” fellowships. And

while I’ve focused on Baptists in America in this description, British Baptists have experienced

this, and the April issue of the BWA’s Baptist World magazine noted that Nigerian Baptists have

as well.50

What I find significant is that even among those Baptist communities that are against

Pentecostal doctrine, Pentecostal practices have influenced worship. What am I describing? It

varies; of course, there might be an emphasis on faith healing, or miracles, or prophecies, or the

use of multiple prayer languages at the same time in worship, or the lifting hands in prayer or

during songs. What is the most common is the adoption of contemporary praise worship.

Christian rock and roll music, or praise choruses, have their roots in Pentecostal-charismatic

circles. I remember when I was a teenager at the end of the 1960s, our church sang the

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contemporary youth musical Good News. It was the first time our church used drums or guitars

in worship. Our youth choir also sang the music of the band called Second Chapter of Acts and

the songs of the father of Jesus rock, Larry Norman, especially his end-time best seller, I Wish

We’d All Been Ready. Why, we even sang regular rock and roll songs that we thought had

Christian themes like Lean on Me and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, songs at the top of the

American music charts. We had to quit singing former Beatles George Harrison’s My Sweet

Lord when we were told that the background singers were chanting the Hindu phrase, Hare

Krishna, Hare Krishna. Today, many churches worship to the tunes of Maranatha or Vineyard or

other Christian musical publishers. Religious music, including hymns, have dipped into secular

sources long before this—that is not really the point—the key factor here is the popularity of the

generic evangelical pentecostalization of worship in Baptist and other churches. Consequently,

music, and lots of it, characterizes Baptist worship more than ever before. In sum, this strong

yearning and search for the Holy Spirit might not or most often doesn’t include speaking in

tongues, but the focus on the explicit presence and power of the Holy Spirit is unabated.

Concluding Thoughts

There was a time when Baptists were described as having a shy member of the Trinity.

We placed so much focus on Jesus Christ that we rarely talked about the Holy Spirit. And while

I believe it is true that Baptists have been Christocentric and still are in much of their language

and practices, I think it is obvious from this journey back through some of Baptist history that

Baptists have really never been shy about the Holy Spirit.

What I have presented today has not been systematic about the Spirit. Baptist DNA is

rooted in freedom and diversity, given its individual and congregational base. As an aside, I am

not sure that systematic and the Spirit go together anyway! And historical vignettes and attitudes

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must always take into account historical context. Still, the material seems to push us toward the

concept that Baptists, the Holy Spirit, and corporate worship, is an interplay or paradox of

individual and communal belief and practice.

Baptist worship is clearly congregational, emphasizing the priesthood of all believers.

Baptists have normally opposed hierarchical or top-down leadership or worship because it

implied that one person could speak for the whole, or it implied that the Holy Spirit was for a

ministerial elite with special grace. Baptist worship has been Word and Spirit based. A

dependence upon Spirit-led preaching and testimony or exposition from the laity has been

present. Baptists have also had the communal aspects of ordinances or sacraments – shared

memorials or shared grace filled events for all who participate.

At the same time, communal emphases have never blotted out the individual DNA of the

Baptist experience. Believer’s baptism, the incorporation of the believer into the body of Christ,

was profoundly a personal act of free un-coerced faith. In the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit has

brought believers face to face with Christ and his redeeming cross, yet has always been taken

together as a group rehearsal, a dramatic sharing of the memory of Christ’s last days or a

dramatic sacramental participation in a grace filling moment enabled by the Spirit.

I have spent a good bit of time reflecting on the connection of Spirit, worship, and the

conscience, not simply because it is fascinating in the Baptist heritage, but because conscience is

at the root of Baptist DNA. While hammered out in days of religious persecution, the Baptist

insistence on personal and communal conscience revealed the indispensable interplay between

worship here and now with the future. In other words, worship was according to conscience

because it was ultimately eschatological. We must be free now to worship according to the

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conscience’s leading by the Spirit-inspired Word because one day we each will face Christ, the

only Lord of the conscience, the only Lawgiver of the soul, at the Last Judgment.

Whatever we want to say about the Holy Spirit, participants in the Holiness and

Pentecostal movements have not been shy about their longing for an explicit and intense

experience of the Spirit—they have begged, tarried and prayed for a fuller experience of God’s

presence and an enduement of power for service. What is intriguing for this study is how the

Pentecostal experience was to further the church’s mission of evangelism. Baptists, as others,

have surely been influenced by this desire, individually and communally, for a deeper explicit

experience of the Spirit’s presence.

What is the future of Baptists, the Holy Spirit and worship? Historians probably

shouldn’t be prognosticators, especially when subsequent research pushes us to nuance our

assessments pretty soon after we’ve made them. My guess is that the desire for explicit or

tangible experiences of God’s grace, presence and power, will find the continued influence of the

Pentecostal tradition upon some expressions of Baptist worship. This will mean more emphasis

on exuberant worship, songs to sustain personal faith and engender communal praise and intense

prayer. This doesn’t mean that hordes of Baptists will become Pentecostal; but it probably means

that the pentecostalization of worship is not something in our rear view mirror.

Another guess is that continued ecumenical dialogue and contemporary attention on the

Trinity will bring additional focus on the sacramental presence of the Spirit in some Baptist

worship. Some Baptist theologians are already recommending that we recognize the “real

presence” of Christ in the Eucharist and participate and receive His grace through the power of

the Holy Spirit.51

We participate in communal acts of belonging in worship as participants in

God’s story. I expect most Baptists to remain, as has been their heritage, a Word-based worship,

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rather than calling themselves a Eucharistic fellowship. And while some Baptists will not travel

down the sacramental road in worship, in this age of focus on community, I expect that most

Baptists will benefit from keener understandings that believers are part of a historically rooted

body of Christ, and as one scholar has put it, we don’t simply join the body, we discover our

relation or attachment to it. We are in community with God and each other by God’s Spirit.52

At the same time, the individualistic, experiential Baptist DNA prevalent throughout

Baptist history has never defined or practiced worship without reserving a prominent role for

personal, direct heart experience of God. Believers who yearn for God’s presence in worship

must be free to follow conscience for God alone is Lord. It is a 400 year old story; my guess is

that I don’t think it is going away or that Baptists will think the Spirit wants it to vanish.

None of these educated guesses, of course, are mutually exclusive!

Unfortunately a look at these Baptist vignettes did not highlight the role of women in the

Baptist heritage. Curtis Freeman’s book on seventeenth century Baptist prophetesses—I only

mentioned Ann Trapnel in passing—is a needed corrective.53

These prophetesses clearly claimed

reliance on the Spirit to speak as she-preachers when the male establishment rarely thought it

appropriate. There are also numerous stories in our own personal experience in recent decades

about Baptists finally applying the priesthood of all believers to persons of both genders. Plenty

of women have heard God’s call in Baptist worship and responded. I don’t think it really is a

guess, then, to say that Baptists will continue to hear the Spirit’s call to be more gender, racial

and ethnic inclusive in worship in the future. I believe theologian Molly Marshall would allow

us to use the title of her work on the Holy Spirit here: it is time to join the dance.54

Let me close by saying that Baptist worship has always sought to be the New Testament

church—even though our scholarship tells us that there really was no one New Testament church

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or worship practice or style. Theologian Stephen Holmes has rightly said that Baptists have

expected the Holy Spirit to be present in worship.55

Baptists of old were not afraid to affirm that

there was more light and truth to bring forth from Scripture. Perhaps this is one reason why Joel

Sierra, in the Baptist World magazine, recently reminded readers that God is not a spectator of

worship. Or as Sierra colorfully put it, “God is not behaving in worship, sitting quietly like the

family “grandma” having a delightful visit… Instead, God is working actively during worship.

God is moving from one place to another, poking someone’s ribs, pulling someone’s sleeves…

Mission starts in worship as we let God “misbehave” and not remain in silent observation.”56

To say that in the language of this address, Baptist worship has been un-coerced,

conscience driven and free to respond to God. Baptists have sought to follow the Spirit-inspired

Word under the Lordship of Christ. And thus in that vein, I’ll close with the following:

--Personal: Jesus says there is joy in heaven when one sinner repents (Luke 15:7)

--Communal: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (Matt. 6:12)

--Personal: Paul says, I have been crucified in Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is

Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20)

--Communal: Work out your (the plural you) own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12)

--And finally: Paul says, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13) and

“For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body…. Now you are the body of Christ and

individually members of it (I Cor. 12: 13, 27).

1 For a discussion of the Baptist story as an attempt to restore the New Testament church, see C. Douglas Weaver, In

Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2008). 2 (Thomas Helwys), “A Declaration of Faith of English People,” in William Lumpkin, ed., Baptist Confessions of

Faith (rev. ed.; Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1969), 119. 3 John Clarke, Ille News from New-England (London, 1652) in Edwin Gaustad, ed., Colonial Baptists:

Massachusetts and Rhode Island (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 80, 85. The rest of the quotation: “there is none

that hath so much right unto his household of Faith by way of ordering it, or yet freedom in it by way of

commanding, as hath Christ Jesus the Lord.” 4“The London Confession, 1644,” in William Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, 165.

24

5 Christopher Blackwood, The Storming of ANTICHRIST, In his two last and strongest Garrisons; Of Compulsion of

Conscience, and Infants Baptism (London: 1644), 8. 6 Thomas Helwys, “Confession of Faith of the True English Church, 1610,” in Joe Early, ed., The Life and Writings

of Thomas Helwys (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), 62. 7 For a narrative of these issues, see Weaver, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story.

8 Stephen Holmes also talks about this individualistic strain in Baptist theology. See Stephen Holmes, Baptist

Theology (London: T & T Clark, 2012), 95. 9 Thomas Collier, A GENERAL EPISTLE TO The Universall Church of the First Born: Whose Names are written in

Heaven (London, 1648), 52. 10

William G. McLoughlin and Martha Whiting Davidson, eds., The Baptist Debate of April 14-15, 1668, in

Colonial Baptists: Massachusetts and Rhode Island (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 112. 11

Samuel Richardson, The Necessity of TOLERATION in Matters of RELIGION, or, Certain QUESTIONS

propounded to the Synod, tending to prove that Corporall punishments ought not to be inflicted upon such as hold

Errors in Religion, and that in matters of Religion, men ought not to be compelled, but have liberty and freedom

(London: 1647) in Edward Bean Underhill, Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, 1614-1661 (London:

The Hanserd Knollys Society, 1846; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1966), 253. 12

George Hammon et al., SION’S GROANS for the DISTRESSED or SOBER ENDEAVOURS TO PREVENT

INNOCENT BLOOD (1661), in Edward Bean Underhill, Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 379. 13

Thomas Collier, THE EXALTATION OF CHRIST in the dayes of the Gospel: As the alone High-Priest, Prophet,

and King, of Saints (London: 1647), 206. 14

Thomas Helwys, “Confession of Faith of the True English Church, 1610,” 62. John Murton, A MOST HUMBLE

SUPPLICATION OF MANY OF THE KING’S MAJESTY’S LOYAL SUBJECTS, READY TO TESTIFY ALL CIVIL

OBEDIENCE, BY THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE, OR OTHERWISE, AND THAT OF CONSCIENCE; WHO ARE

PERSECTURED (ONLY FOR DIFFERING IN RELIGION), CONTRARY TO DIVINE AND HUMAN

TESTIMONIES (1620), in Edward Bean Underhill, Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 227. 15

Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1947), 35. 16

Samuel Richardson, The Necessity of TOLERATION, 260. 17

Henry Denne, THE QUAKER NO PAPIST, in Answer to The Quaker Disarm’d, OR A brief Reply and Censure of

Mr. Thomas Smith’s frivolous Relation of a Dispute held betwixt himself and certain Quakers at Cambridge

(London: 1659), 22. 18

Francis Bampfield, The Lord’s Free Prisoner (London: Printed for W. T., 1683). Online: http://www.seventh-day-

baptist.org.au/library/books /prisoner.htm. 19

Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, in Early, ed., The Life and Writings of Thomas

Helwys, 203. Blackwood, The Storming of ANTICHRIST, 11. 20

John Murton, A MOST HUMBLE SUPPLICATION, 198. Edwin Gaustad, ed. Baptist Piety, The Last Will and

Testimony of Obadiah Holmes (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 110-111. 21

Edward Barber, A Declaration and Vindication of the Carriage of Edward Barber (London: 1648), 1-2, 7. 22

Thomas Grantham, CHRISTIANISMUS PRIMITIVUS: OR, THE Ancient Christian Religion, IN ITS Nature,

Certainty, Excellency, and Beauty, (Internal and External) particularly Considered, Asserted, and Vindicated,

FROM The many Abuses which have Invaded That Sacred Profession, By Humane Innovation, or pretended

Revelation (London: 1678), 9. 23

John Clarke, Ille News, 37. Obadiah Holmes in Edwin Gaustad, Baptist Piety, 85. 24

Curtis Freeman, “Visionary Women among Early Baptists,” Baptist Quarterly 43 (2010): 261. 25

Noted by Stephen Holmes, Baptist Theology, 108. 26

Obadiah Holmes, in Edwin Gaustad, Baptist Piety, 81. 27

Philip Thompson, “A New Question in Baptist History: Seeking a Catholic Spirit Among Early Baptists,” Pro

Ecclesia 8, 1 (Winter 1999): 62-64. Anthony Cross also cited Benjamin Keach. See Anthony Cross, “Dispelling the

Myth of English Baptist Baptismal Sacramentalism,” Baptist Quarterly, 38, 8 (October 2000): 367-391. 28

E. Y. Mullins, “The Baptist Position as to Restricted Communion,” in J. M. Frost, ed., Christian Union Relative to

Baptist Churches (Nashville: SSB of the SBC, 1915), 92-97. See also C. Douglas Weaver, “The Baptist

Ecclesiology of E. Y. Mullins: Individualism and the New Testament Church,” Baptist History and Heritage 43, 1

(Winter 2008): 18-34. 29

B. H. Carroll, Ecclesia: The Church, Bible Class Lecture, February (Louisville, KY: 1903; repr., Paris, ARK: The

Baptist Standard Bearer, Inc., 2006), 107-108, 119-120, 136.

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30

Several sections of this presentation draw upon earlier research that dealt with the role of conscience, ecclesiology

and eschatology. In one essay, I focused on seventeenth century Baptists in England. In the other essay, I traced

these themes among Baptists in America from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. The focus of these

essays was not worship or the Holy Spirit, though some of the material lends itself to an explicit analysis of themes

related to Baptist worship and the Holy Spirit. See C. Douglas Weaver, “Early English Baptists: Individual

Conscience and Eschatological Ecclesiology,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 38, 4 (Summer 2011): 141-158. C.

Douglas Weaver, “Baptist Ecclesiology from John Clarke to E. Y. Mullins: The Personal, The Communal, and the

Eschatological,” Perspectives in Religious Studies (forthcoming Fall 2013). 31

Leonard Busher, RELIGIONS PEACE, or A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, 1614 (London: Printed for John

Sweeting, 1646) in Edward Bean Underhill, Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 35. John Clarke, Ille News, 6.

Christopher Blackwood, The Storming of ANTICHRIST, 20. 32

John Murton, Persecution for Religion, Judg’d and Condemn’d: In a Discourse, between an Antichristian and a

Christian (1615), in Edward Bean Underhill, Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 103. John Clarke, Ille News, 6. 33

John Leland, “Virginia Chronicle,” in L. F. Greene, ed., The Writings of John Leland (New York; 1845; repr.,

New York: Arno Press, 1969), 123. 34

Edward Barber, A Small Treatise of Baptism or Dipping. Wherein Is Clearly showed that the Lord Christ

Ordained Dipping for those only that profess Repentance and FAITH (1641), 30. Christopher Blackwood, The

Storming of ANTICHRIST, 72-73. 35

Samuel Richardson, The Necessity of TOLERATION, 271. 36

Isaac Backus, “A Fish Caught in His Own Net (1768),” in William G. McLoughlin, ed., Isaac Backus on Church,

State, and Calvinism (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1968), 190, 198, 207, 211, 238, 248. 37

E. Y. Mullins, The Axioms of Religion (1908), C. Douglas Weaver, ed. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2010),

13-14. 38

B. H. Carroll, Ecclesia, 62. 39

Hercules Collins, A Voice from the Prison or Meditations on Revelations 3:11 Tending to the Establishment of

God’s Little Flock, in An Hour of Temptation (London: George Larkin, 1684), 24-28. John Clarke, Ille News, 100. 40

Richardson, The Necessity of TOLERATION, 254, 256. Edward Barber, To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty, and

the Honorable Court of Parliament (1641), 3. Joseph Hooke, A Necessary Apology for the Baptized Believer;

Wherein They are Vindicated from the Unjust and Pernicious Accusations of Mr. William Errat, the Parish Minister

of Hatfield near Doncaster in Yorkshire, in his Epistle to John Woodward (London: R. Tookey, 1701), 55. 41

Baptists cited Romans 14:2 on this issue. John Murton, A MOST HUMBLE SUPPLICATION, 214. See my

research cited in footnote 30. Other English Baptists of the seventeenth century that could be cited include: Thomas

Helwys, Henry Danvers, George Hammon, Thomas Grantham, and Christopher Blackwood. Others on the

American side include John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and some Boston Baptists involved in the Debate of 1668. In

subsequent centuries, just a few names: Isaac Backus, John Leland, William Fristoe, Francis Wayland, John Q.

Adams, Henry Fish, Alvah Hovey, B. H. Carroll and E. Y. Mullins. 42

“Experience of W. E. Noyes, A Pastor in Maine,” in John Adams, ed., Experiences of the Higher Christian Life in

the Baptist Denomination (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1870), 227. 43

Henry C. Fish, Primitive Piety Revived or The Aggressive Power of the Christian Church (1855) (Harrisonburg,

VA: Gano Books, 1987), 59. 44

Richard Fuller, “Personal Religion, Its Aids and Hinderances,” in Philip Schaff and S. Irenaeus Prime, eds.,

History, Essays, Orations, and other Documents of the Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, Held

in New York, October 2-12, 1873 (Harper and Brothers, 1874), 333-337. 45

This is the language of John Q. Adams and Absalom Earle. See bibliographic information below in footnotes 46

and 47. 46

John Q. Adams, Sanctification: a sermon, preached in the North Baptist Church, New York, June 12, 1859. John

Q. Adams, “Experience of John Q. Adams,” in John Adams, ed., Experiences of the Higher Christian Life in the

Baptist Denomination (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1870), 130. 47

Absalom B. Earle, The Rest of Faith (Boston: James H. Earle, 1873), 62-74. 48

Emerson Andrews, Living Life; Or, Autobiography of Rev. Emerson Andrews (Boston: James H. Earle, 1872),

313-316. Emerson Andrews, Revival Sermons, Preached in Protracted Meetings (Boston: James H. Earle, 1882),

29-34 and 84-89. Absalom Backus Earle, Abiding Peace (Boston: James H. Earle, Publisher, 1881), 20. 49

A. J. Gordon, The Ministry of the Spirit (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1894). 50

Baptist World 60, 2 (April/June 2013). Numerous accounts of Pentecostalism exist. Two that mention Baptist

(though with no “Baptist chapter”) are: Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of

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American Pentecostalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Estrelda Alexander, Black Fire: One Hundred

Years of African American Pentecostalism (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2011). 51

See for example, Anthony Cross and Philip Thompson, eds., Baptist Sacramentalism (Waynesboro, GA:

Paternoster, 2003) and Baptist Sacramentalism 2 (Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2008). 52

Stanley Grenz, “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as Community Acts: Toward a Sacramental Understanding of the

Ordinances,” Anthony Cross and Philip Thompson, eds., Baptist Sacramentalism, 90, 94. 53

Curtis Freeman, A Company of Women Preachers: Baptist Prophetesses in Seventeenth-Century England: A

Reader (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011). 54

Molly T. Marshall, Joining the Dance: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2003). 55

Stephen Holmes, Baptist Theology, 110. 56

Joel Sierra, “God is Not Behaving,” Baptist World 60, 2 (April/June 2013): 11.