In this insightful book, Bill Leonard illuminates the diversity, complexity, and divisiveness of Baptist life in the United States. Most impressively, Baptists in America builds on Leonard's earlier contributions—especially Baptist Ways (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 2003), his comprehensive survey of Baptist history, Dictionary of Baptists in America (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994), which he edited, and God's Last and Only Hope (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), his history of the Southern Baptist Convention and its fragmentation. And yet Baptists in America does not simply rehash previous arguments in an updated form. What Leonard offers instead is a new evaluation of the Baptist experience from historical and contemporary perspectives. As part of the Columbia Contemporary American Religion series, this book emphasizes current issues. Here Leonard examines Baptist perspectives on scripture, theology, polity, race, religious liberty, women in ministry, and controversial morality debates, including arguments over sexual ethics, divorce, war, alcohol, gambling, and other issues. The book contextualizes these discussions with two chapters of historical survey, followed by an overview of theology and practice as viewed especially through historic confessions. Next is a remarkably concise and instructive classification of Baptist groups in all their teeming variety. National, American, and Southern Baptists receive due attention, but not to the neglect of Seventh-Day, Primitive, Old Regular, Union, Free Will, and Independent Baptists, among others. Informed by the vast diversity of Baptist communions, the focus here is on identity—both present and past—and the historical formation of contemporary positions.

Baptists always defy simple classification. As Leonard observes, Baptist ranks have included such diverse figures as Jesse Jackson, Jesse Helms, Martin Luther King, Jr., Strom Thurmond, Tim LaHaye, and Maya Angelou (2). Certainly the Baptist common denominator is not political, nor is it easily identified theologically. Aside from a historic commitment to believers' baptism, Baptists differ greatly in thought and practice. Historians and theologians have listed several distinctive characteristics of Baptist theology and polity, including soul competency, freedom, individualism, community, Biblicism, and mission, among others. Leonard recognizes, however, that these convictions are not uniquely Baptist. Moreover, Baptists have disagreed over the meaning of each “mark” of Baptist identity. Leonard's provocative solution in this and previous works is to locate the perennial tensions in Baptist life. For example, Baptists have consistently expressed reverence for biblical authority (sometimes inerrancy) while also proclaiming the liberty of the individual conscience; Baptists have safeguarded the authority of the local church but often in relation to some influence from associations and conventions; and Baptists have professed to be patriotic citizens while also proclaiming some conception of religious liberty that has often placed them in opposition to government (88–89). These and other paradoxical relationships frame Leonard's skillful analysis of Baptist diversity.

In one of his most insightful chapters, for instance, Leonard reveals the conflicted Baptist heritage of religious liberty. That is, throughout their history, Baptists have fiercely defended religious liberty, though they have just as fiercely debated its meaning and its implications for the relationship between church and state. In the seventeenth century, for example, Roger Williams believed that any attempt to establish a Christian nation violated Christianity itself and contradicted the sacred truth of religious liberty. In the next century, however, Isaac Backus believed that religious liberty and a Christian nation were compatible (158–161). Today Baptist advocates for religious liberty fall into at least two categories: separatists who deny any government assistance to religion and accommodationists who accept any government support of religion that does not privilege one faith over others (179–181). Throughout Baptist history, therefore, the conviction for religious liberty, including the intense conflict over its meaning, has been integral to Baptist identity. Likewise in the other tensions that Leonard examines, Baptists have defined themselves more by their conflicts than by their substantial agreements. Succinctly put, “being Baptist is messy, controversial, and divisive” (156). And yet in each case Leonard captures the coherence amid the contention.

Given all this paradox and diversity among Baptist groups, it is no surprise that Baptists have held conflicting perspectives on political and social issues. Leonard surmises that Baptists often position themselves as a “sectarian establishment” in the United States. The “sectarian” identity makes good historical sense. After all, Baptists were outsiders in the colonial period—quite literally a sectarian minority, often in revolt against oppressive governments and their established churches. And even today it is clear that sectarian identity and rhetoric die hard. Despite their phenomenal growth in the United States over the last two centuries, Baptists often retain a sectarian perspective, speaking out on all sides of controversial issues ranging from civil rights to abortion rights and prayer in schools, most often positioning themselves in conflict with the status quo. And yet due to their sheer numbers—over thirty million strong—Baptists have contributed to a Protestant establishment that has exerted substantial influence on society. Ironically, therefore, Baptists have become “at once the ‘culture despisers’ and the ‘culture promoters’” (3).

Baptists in America is engagingly written and remarkably comprehensive. Leonard's analysis connects with the latest scholarship on Baptists and American religious history, and includes an annotated bibliography that documents the prolific scholarly interest in Baptist topics. As this book convincingly demonstrates, Baptist life in America is diverse—so diverse that no single book can possibly represent it all, though this one comes as close as one can expect in a single volume. Moreover, no book surpasses this one in placing contemporary questions in conversation with historical precedents. In Baptists in America, Bill Leonard not only narrates the Baptist past, he skillfully analyzes its place in the Baptist present.