Apocalypse How? Baptist Movements during the English Revolution (review)

Apocalypse How? Baptist Movements during the English Revolution. By Mark R. Bell. (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press. 2000. Pp. ix, 299. $35.00.)

Mark Bell's welcome study of the various Baptist groups in the seventeenth century, primarily before 1660, relies extensively on the studies of Murray Tolmie, Bryan Ball and B. R. White. Yet his approach is unique because of the significance he attaches to millenarianism in interpreting the history of these groups. The General (Arminian) Baptists, he argues, developed a relatively sophisticated organization as a result of their missionary zeal, which in turn was rooted in their apocalyptic tenets. The Particular (Calvinist) Baptists emerged from the Henry Jacob-John Lathrop-Henry Jessey circle in an attempt to re-establish the apostolic church under the authority of King Jesus, an effort grounded in apocalyptic convictions. Likewise, Bell avers that the Baptist call for liberty of conscience was framed in the context of the apocalyptic struggle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist. For a while the Baptists formed an uneasy alliance with the Levellers, but whereas the latter argued for sweeping reforms based on inherent rights, the Baptists envisioned reform through the prism of millenarianism. The alliance unraveled, Bell contends, when the threat of Presbyterian domination faded, the Baptists recognized their fundamental differences with the Levellers, and at least some Baptists began to endorse the government in apocalyptic terms.

As I have asserted with respect to Presbyterians and Friends in Ireland, Bell makes a compelling argument that the General and Particular Baptists, especially in the years following their break with the Levellers, developed organizational structures and strong leaders that enabled these movements to become proto-denominations, thereby laying the groundwork for them to become modern denominations in a later age. Bell astutely charts how the more conservative Baptists, who were increasingly willing to accommodate society, dominated these proto-denominations, forcing the more apocalyptically minded Baptists into the Fifth Monarchist and Seventh-Day Baptist movements. Bell takes issue with White and B. S. Capp, arguing for a much closer relationship between Baptists and Fifth Monarchists; a majority of the latter, he suggests, endorsed believers' baptism. With the coming of the Protectorate, the Fifth Monarchists and the more moderate Baptists split when the eschatological tenets of the former prompted them to denounce the Cromwellian regime for its apostasy. Unlike the Baptists, the Fifth Monarchists eschewed organizational development and thus eventually disappeared, though somewhat later than Bell suggests, for there were identifiable Fifth Monarchists in the late 1680's. He draws some intriguing parallels between the Fifth Monarchists and Seventh-Day Baptists, noting that both groups reacted against the waning apocalyptic outlook in English society and the extent to which the more moderate Baptists reached an accord with society. According to Bell, as the Fifth Monarchist movement disintegrated, those members who desired to remain in opposition to society became Seventh-Day Baptists rather than rejoining the Particular or General Baptists. Although open-membership, open-communion Baptists--he calls them "Independent Baptists"--are noted throughout the book, more systematic analysis would have been welcome.

Bell's well-argued volume is an important contribution to Baptist studies. Unfortunately, it is marred by a major breakdown in copyediting and proofreading, including references to "Straffordshire" rather than Staffordshire, and "Fenstation" rather than Fenstanton.

 

Richard L. Greaves
Florida State University

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