Baptists: Modern or Postmodern?

Abstract

Baptists were born with modernity in the early seventeenth century and in many ways fit almost hand-in-glove. Baptists have particularly flourished in the twentieth century, with Southern Baptists becoming the largest Protestant denomination in the United States and especially dominant in the Midwest and the South. The question before us is, what might the breakdown of the modern paradigm mean for Baptists who do not wish simply to hitch their theological wagon to modernity? After setting out the contours of a constructive postmodernism, I give an example, namely, the Baptist distinctive of freedom, of how Baptist thought and practice can be reconfigured in such a way that its deepest values are not lost but highlighted in new ways.