Today marks the debut of the “Baptists Today blog, something that will offer BT readers a daily tidbit of news, commentary, or a devotional thought to go along with all those spiffy links to news items from other sources.
We hope it’ll give you more incentive to visit the site more often, and to tell your friends about it, too.
Today marks not only the debut of the BT blog, but also my first official day as “Contributing Editor” for Baptists Today. My first assignment is to cover a “Baptist History Celebration,” being held Aug. 1-3 in Charleston, S.C.
I haven’t quite figured out the history of the history celebration yet — groups I know like the Baptist History and Heritage Society were apparently not invited to participate, but prominent Baptist historians like Bill Brackney, recently of Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary, and Bill Leonard of the Wake Forest University Divinity School were invited to speak.
Go figure.
Sponsors/organizers of the celebration include a variety of Baptists groups that aren’t well known to folks more familiar with Cooperative Baptists and Southern Baptists, such as the General Association of Regular Baptists.
The program gets underway with a discussion of “British Baptist Confessional History and its Impact on American Baptist History,” which should be of some interest given the current debate over how credal Baptists should be, and whether something like the “Baptist Faith and Message” is a confession or a creed, or if it’s a matter of interpretation.
One should note that today marks history of another kind, as Norman Wiggins, who attended and later presided over Campbell University for 36 years, died early this morning, at 83.
I’ve never known a man who more thoroughly identified with his job: Dr. Wiggins was history walking, and it was a privilege to have known him.
Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and the Contributing Editor and Curriculum Writer at Good Faith Media.
