Centre for Baptist Studies

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The Centre has had a busy year of events in 2022. Project Violet, a three-year participatory research project into the place of women in Baptist ministry hosted by the Centre and led by Helen Cameron and Jane Day, continues to attract significant attention. The first two phases of the research have been successfully completed and women co-researchers are now working on their projects with the support of the project coleaders. Online seminars have kept supporters connected to the research. Rachel Muers and Ruth Moriarty addressed the theme of ‘Discernment, dialogue and the Church Meeting’ whilst Lina Toth and Beth AllisonGlenny discussed ‘A Theology of the Family’.

The Centre co-sponsored with the Baptist Historical Society a triennial summer conference in July 2022 at Woodbrooke, Birmingham on the theme of British Baptists in Nineteenth-Century Culture. Papers ranged from analysing Baptists and the Bible in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Chris Joynes) to exploring relations between the Baptist Missionary Society and Bible women in Haiti (Bianca Dang).

We held a groundbreaking day conference ‘Charting the History of Black British Baptists’ at Regent’s in November. Speakers discussed Black Baptists in a white imperial world (David

Killingray) and the liberatory writings of Rev Peter Thomas Stanford (Barbara McCaskill and Sidonia Serafini). Gale Richards highlighted the significance of retrieving the voices of Black Baptist women whilst Eleasah Louis raised methodological issues around ‘marching through Black-British Baptist minefields’! The Centre also continues its strong partnership with the Sam Sharpe project, sponsored in its tenth anniversary year in 2022 by the University of Oxford with Kehinde Andrews as the guest speaker.

Our CBS Lunchtime Seminars continued in 2022. In the spring, we welcomed the creators of Creating Sanctuary (Myra Blyth, Luke Dowding, Andrea King) to share their research. The Trinity term seminar welcomed Rev Dr Martin Hobgen who presented on the theme of Disability and Friendship.

We embarked on new collaborations during the year, working together with the Centre for Anabaptist Studies at Bristol Baptist College and the Anabaptist Theology Forum to co-organise the online event Exploring Anabaptist Theology. CBS Research Associate Malcolm Yarnell led the discussion.

The Centre has continued to publish a variety of literature, ranging from Andy Goodliff’s 2022 Whitley Lecture (The Ruling Christ and the Witnessing Church: Towards a Baptist Political Theology) to Murdina McDonald’s London Calvinistic Baptists 1689-1727 and Matthew Stanton’s Liturgy and Identity.

Details of our forthcoming activities can be found via the College website, or our Twitter account @CBS Oxford. We continue to work in close collaboration with the Angus Library, for example supporting the ‘Opening the Angus’ online seminars and the appointment of the Brackney scholarship. Many of our events will continue online or hybrid in 2023, so we hope that you will join us!

From the history of Romanian Baptists in the first years of the 20th century, to research into women missionaries in the Congo, so much interesting research takes place in the Angus reading room that we often travel through many centuries and countries in one afternoon!

The first volumes of the Baptist Missionary Society subcommittee minute books have undergone conservation and repair work and this project will continue until all of the volumes have been stabilised. Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Angus, the diaries of Jane Attwater, which give a glimpse into the spiritual life of a Baptist woman in the 18th and 19th centuries, have now been photographed and placed on an open collections platform. The platform also hosts other fascinating materials from the Angus, such as the Hexham and Hamsterley and Cripplegate church books, and Stinton’s Repository (1712).

The Angus participated this year in the ‘Finding Archives and Manuscripts Across Oxford’s Unique Special Collections’ project, which aims to improve access to manuscripts held throughout the University. Interesting manuscripts in the Angus include an early 19th century Bengali Grammar, beautifully written by William Carey.

We were pleased to produce an overview film of Sam Sharpe’s life and the events of the rebellion, using the important collection of material regarding Sam Sharpe and abolitionism held in the Angus.

The Friends of the Angus continues to flourish and this year we have held ‘Opening the Angus’ talks on topics reflecting the rich variety of the collection, including ‘William Carey as a botanist’, ‘Amnesty International and the Human Rights movement’, ‘Margaret Jarman, Deaconess and seminal figure in 20th century Baptist life’, ‘the use of Magic Lanterns in mission by British Baptists’ and ‘Edith Gates, a pioneering woman in Baptist ministry’.