2023 Truth, Love, Unity | Steve Holmes
Steve Holmes
14.13
4 April 2024
15 September 2025
"Born in Battle: Changing Early English Baptist Attitudes to the Civil War" Rev Steve Holmes is a senior lecturer in theology (University of St Andrews, UK) The Baptist presence in the New Model Army during the English Civil War was hugely significant for the spread of Baptist ideas across England in the middle of the seventeenth century, with Army officers or chaplains preaching and planting churches wherever the Army paused. At the same time, however, Baptist attitudes towards the Civil War were rapidly changing: probably, the majority of Baptist preachers were enthusiastic advocates of the war in 1640, seeing the war as a instrumental in fulfilling the prophecies of Daniel, and so in paving the way for the return of Christ; by 1650, most Baptists had energetically repudiated such ideas. This paper will sketch this history very briefly, and then explore the lasting effects of the changed perspective on war to Baptist political theology, particularly in relation to the separation of church and state.
