Baptist origins revisited: A study of the dual influence of English separatism and Dutch Mennonite theology upon seventeenth-century English Baptists

The purpose of this research project is to identify foundational theological beliefs of seventeenth-century English Baptists by examining the historical, political, and theological matrix from which they emerged. Seventeenth-century English Baptist confessional documents are analyzed in order to identify core Baptist principles. These principles then are compared with the foundational theological principles of seventeenth-century English Separatism and sixteenth-century European Anabaptism. The analysis identifies commonly held characteristics and facilitates further discussion of the problems of theological continuity and Baptist origins.;At present Baptist historians have no single, unified theory for Baptist origins, although the dominantly held view is the English Separatist descent theory. Recent research points to the Anabaptist heritage as a plausible and historiographically demonstrable source of key elements of Baptist theology and practice. Expanding upon Glen Stassen's work which identified significant portions of the First London Confession of 1644 as borrowed from Menno Simons's Foundation of Christian Doctrine, this research project identifies Mennonite influence in several other seventeenth-century English Baptist confessional documents.;The research demonstrates that a new paradigm must be proposed for twenty-first century Baptist historiography. The historicity of Baptist origins no longer should remain problematic and schismatic. Baptists emerged from English Separatism and Dutch Anabaptism.