Pathways and Patterns in History

Professor David Bebbington is a highly regarded historian. He holds a chair at the University of Stirling, has been President of the Ecclesiastical History Society, and has delivered numerous endowed lecture series, as well as being deeply involved in the Dr Williams's Dissenting Academies Project. He is both a popular and influential academic historian, whose writings have significantly shaped our thinking about the history of evangelicalism, Baptist life, and political developments. In Pathways and Patterns, colleagues, former research students and friends who are indebted to Professor Bebbington and value his contribution to scholarship join together to pay tribute to his outstanding work. Not only has he stimulated academic endeavour, he has also given much personal support, not least to those in the Baptist Historical Society and in Colleges, among them Spurgeon's College and Baylor University (USA) where he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor. This volume reflects his wide involvements and the grateful esteem in which he is held. Among Professor Bebbington's achievements has been both instituting and masterminding the very important International Conference on Baptist Studies (ICOBS), held every three years in different parts of the world. It is appropriate, then, that this volume was presented to him at the Seventh ICOBS Conference held in Manchester, July 2015.

About the Author :
Anthony R. Cross has written extensively on the subject of baptism, most recently in his Recovering the Evangelical Sacrament: Baptisma Semper Reformandum (Pickwick Publications, 2013). He has also written on the issues of the place of theology in Baptist ministerial preparation, and the factors which led to English Baptist acceptance of the Evangelical Revival in the eighteenth century. He was an Adjunct Supervisor at The International Baptist Theological Seminary Centre, Amsterdam, having previously served as a Baptist minister, and taught church history and theology at the Universities of Surrey, Roehampton, and Oxford. Peter J. Morden is Vice Principal and Lecturer in Church History and Spirituality, Spurgeon's College, London. Ian M. Randall is a Senior Research Fellow, Spurgeon's College, London, and a Research Associate of the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

Review :
'Here is a collection of sparkling essays, weighty and well-researched, in honour of one of our most consequential Christian scholars. A worthy tribute to a great historian.' Timothy George is the founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama 'David Bebbington has become one of the most influential and widely cited British historians. This volume of essays celebrates his extraordinary achievement in writing the history of popular Protestantism - and demonstrates the affection and admiration with which he is regarded by his peers and the generation of scholars whose thinking he has so profoundly shaped. ' Crawford Gribben is Professor of Early Modern British History, School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University, Belfast 'David Bebbington is the doyen of evangelical historians, a position of esteem justly gained by disciplined and meticulous research allied to creative flair and interpretation. Not least among his achievements is the train of other scholars who have been inspired and shaped by his work and who are highly valued in their turn. This volume is a worthy tribute to a worthy colleague. ' Nigel G. Wright is Principal Emeritus of Spurgeon's College, London