Baptists in Early North America—First Baptist, Providence, is the second volume to appear in the BENA Series. Designed as a unique contribution to religious and Baptist scholarship, BENA recovers never-before-published original records and manuscripts for students, scholars, and genealogists. Each volume contains transcribed original seventeenth- and eighteenth-century record and manuscript material, accompanied by a historical introduction, scholarly notation, a comprehensive bibliography, and index. Specialists in each volume have painstakingly prepared the texts and introductory matter.
This church, also known as the First Baptist Church in America, was founded in 1638 by Roger Williams and a group of religious outcasts from Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The dozen original manuscript record books are carefully reproduced with annotations and an historical introduction by the distinguished historian of the church, J. Stanley Lemons.
Also included are eighteenth-century pew rental lists and membership rosters for the congregation that evolved from Calvinistic roots, to General Six Principle, to Regular Baptist identity.
This congregation was closely related to Brown University and included numerous pastoral luminaries—such as Confederation congressman, James Manning—as it encountered the trends of American religious history in the bustling seaport of Providence, Rhode Island.
Other assets of this volume include two appendices and a comprehensive index.