Daniel X: Watch the Skies

Watch the Skies (Daniel X)

Teen & Young Adult

Patterson, James A.

Literature & Fiction

Little,Brown & Co

Those who identify with the cause of distinctly Christian higher education will appreciate this proud history of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). The book marks the organization's twenty-fifth anniversary. 
Shining Lights will be released under the imprint RenewedMinds, a publishing partnership between the CCCU and Baker Academic.

Shining Lights: A History of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Baker Pub Group

James Robinson Graves (1820-1893) is known for firmly believing that Baptists of his day needed clearly distinct markers in order to preserve a meaningful denominational identity. The founder of Landmarkism, his theology emphasized church succession (an unbroken trail of authentic congregations dating back to the New Testament), the local church (rather than the idea of a universal Body of Christ), and strict baptism guidelines. 
In this first biography of Graves in more than eighty years, author James A. Patterson portrays the man as bold and brash. A native of Vermont who moved south to Nashville in 1845, the self-educated preacher and budding journalist would become a combative defender of the Baptist cause, engaging in public controversy with Methodists, Restorationists, and even fellow Baptists.
Ultimately, Graves sought to influence the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention in its formative period and was the primary shaper of the “Tennessee Tradition,” now considered a key strand of Southern Baptist life and identity. By focusing on Graves’s understanding of essential Baptist boundary markers, this book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Landmark legacy. It concludes with an epilogue that discusses the enduring influence of his ideas in the decades after his death.

James Robinson Graves: Staking the Boundaries of Baptist Identity (Studies in Baptist Life and Thought)

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

B&H Academic

James A. Patterson's groundbreaking study of the life and mind of James Robinson Graves explores the history of Landmarkism in the nineteenth century. Under this doctrine, Graves proposed that "true" Baptists should be able to trace their lineage directly to the early church, rather than through the strands of Protestantism. Controversial in its day, and often poorly understood now, Landmarkism, in Patterson's nuanced interpretation, is important for understanding an essential feature of Baptist life to the present day: how do Baptists stake out their identities in reference to other Baptists and to members of competing denominations? While Graves has been widely dismissed by recent historians, in Patterson's skillful revision, this figure draws much nearer to central concerns of Baptist thinking since the First Great Awakening. This addition to the America's Baptists series blends biographical insight with a thematic approach that focuses primarily on Graves's controversial beliefs about ecclesiology, Baptist history, and eschatology. Patterson divides this work into seven chapters that progress chronologically, and this updated edition includes an expanded discussion of Christian republicanism, elaborates on the question of Graves and race, and features a longer epilogue to account for recent scholarship on Graves and Landmarkism. James Robinson Graves is an accessible introduction to the significant albeit disputed role that the Landmark tradition played in the shaping of Southern Baptist life and thought. Seminary students and scholars of nineteenth-century Southern Baptist history will find a rich new interpretation of this misunderstood figure. JAMES A. PATTERSON holds a PhD in American church history from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is emeritus university professor of theological studies at Union University. He is the author of Shining Lights: A History of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities and To All the World: A History of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 1972-1997.

James Robinson Graves: Staking the Boundaries of Baptist Identity (America's Baptists)

Univ Tennessee Press

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Books by Patterson, James A.