Early English Baptists: Origins, Identities & Influence

This module will survey the origins and development of English Baptists in seventeenth-century England. We will locate early modern baptismal controversies within their historical, social and cultural contexts and explore the self-identity of the seventeenth-century English men and women questioning Christendom’s long-standing assumption that infants were appropriate subjects for baptism.

In treating these issues we will also consider the ways in which early modern historical narratives of Baptist origin and identity have been appropriated by later groups in an attempt to self-fashion their own religious identities.