The earliest records of what became Philadelphia's First Baptist Church open with an anomaly: The city that housed colonial Baptists’ first denominational body, the Philadelphia Baptist Association, formed in 1707, lacked an independent Baptist congregation until the 1740s. Instead, Baptists who worshiped in Philadelphia met as a branch of a Welsh congregation eleven miles distant in Lower Dublin township, the Pennepek Baptist Church, named for the creek (now called “Pennypack”) in which it baptized new members. The Philadelphia Baptists did not organize themselves as an independent congregation until 1746, although they appear in the Pennepek records as early as 1698, and full congregational records exist only from 1757, this printed edition ending in 1806.

Van Broekhoven's superbly edited records chart First Baptist's rise from a small and late organizing group to one with a significant presence in the Philadelphia Baptist Association. Initial two-to-six-line entries in the late 1750s ballooned to multiple paragraphs as early as 1762 and remained so for the next half-century, filling five hundred printed pages in this edition despite missing records between 1775 and 1779. Van Broekhoven's introduction highlights issues that course through the congregation's minutes—money, struggles and successes with clergy, member problems, women's roles in the congregation, cautious dealings with Black Baptists, the centrality of singing and hymns in worship, relations with other White Baptist congregations and the Association, and, of course, unending issues with its sanctuary.

Spot-checking Van Broekhoven's edition with the First Baptist manuscripts available online through the extraordinary Philadelphia Congregations Early Records project (https://philadelphiacongregations.org/records/), which provides beautifully digitized copies of multiple Philadelphia church and synagogue materials, confirms its excellence. It reproduces even deletions in the records, straightens out confusing financial entries, and provides footnotes that explain puzzling references, allusions, and gaps in the manuscript entries. Here, then, is another excellent volume in Mercer University Press's important Baptists in Early North America series. It should be in the library of every Baptist college and of every U.S. research university.