Overview

In Baptist Piety, Edwin S. Gaustad has combined a carefully researched and long overdue three-chapter biography of the New England Baptist, Obadiah Holmes (1607?-1682), with an equally carefully edited modern rendition of Holmes's hitherto unpublished Testimony (1675) and Last Will (1681). Gaustad Deftly traces Holmes's life from Reddish, near Manchester, in old England to Salem in Massachusetts Bay Colony, to Rehoboth (Seekonk) in Plymouth Colony, and finally to the vicinity of Newport, Rhode Island. With understanding he narrates the struggles of the Baptist church in Newport served by this farmer-weaver-pastor in the face of three schisms: Six-Principle (Arminian), Sabbatarian, and Quaker. Readers will be fascinated by Gaustad's account of Holmes's being fined, imprisoned, and whipped ""thirty times across . . . the bare back"" for his activities as a Baptist visiting in Boston in 1651.

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9780817352691

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In this little volume Gaustad has provided us with fine primary source material on a little-known Baptist of the 17th century. [Obadiah Holmes's] document itself is of considerable interest, since we have so few personal accounts from early Baptists, besides the outstanding men like Roger Williams. Reading Holmes, one recognizes the deep roots of evangelical piety in America.... Valuable as the text is, the editor's introduction makes the book far more significant.... Gaustad provides a fine account of the events that were the context for Holmes's life and action, [and] abundant and well-chosen excerpts from debates and trials provide the reader with a powerful sense of the desires and hopes of the men who struggled to bring various brands of holiness to New England. - New England Quarterly

Author Information

Edwin S. Gaustad is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside, and author or editor of numerous books, including The Great Awakening in New England and The Historical Atlas of Religion in America.

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