Pure Worship: The Early English Baptist Distinctive

Matthew Ward

Apr 2014 · Monographs in Baptist History Kitabu cha 3 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

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Baptists are not often thought of as leading theologians and practitioners of worship. But forgotten in history is one crucial fact: the Baptist tradition formed out of a desire to worship God purely. Early Baptists devoted immense energy to questions of worship and drew conclusions of even contemporary value. Through the seismic liturgical shifts of English society in the seventeenth century, worship was both their most galvanizing and disintegrating impulse. As time passed and terminology changed and Baptists shied away from this divisive topic, this emphasis was lost. No one today considers worship a Baptist distinctive. Pure Worship re-creates the fascinating historical context of the early years of the English Baptists. Examining many thousands of manuscript pages, Matthew Ward pieces together an entire theology of worship that not only guided the early Baptists but also attracted the attention of many elements of English Christianity. Baptist thoughts on worship were neither minor nor tangential but the very heart of what distinguished them from the rest of England. Pure Worship offers a complete reenvisioning of what it meant to be an early Baptist and reveals their overwhelming desire to be known as pure worshippers of God.

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Matthew Ward spent thirteen years as a minister of worship and education and is now the associate pastor of First Baptist Church Thomson, Georgia focusing on discipleship and outreach. His PhD is in Free Church theology, and he also taught Western history at The College at Southwestern in Fort Worth,
TX. He has several publications about worship and Baptists and is currently working on a sourcebook for the hymn-singing controversy. He and his wife, Shelly, have two kids, Micah and Sarah.