Baptist Piety: The Last Will and Testimony of Obadiah Holmes

Religion and American Culture

by Edwin S. Gaustad (Editor)

In Baptist Piety , Edwin S. Gaustad has combined a carefully researched and long overdue three-chapter biography of the New England Baptist, Obadiah Holmes (1607?-1682), with an equally carefully edited modern rendition of Holmes's hitherto unpublished Testimony (1675) and Last Will (1681).

Gaustad Deftly traces Holmes's life from Reddish, near Manchester, in old England to Salem in Massachusetts Bay Colony, to Rehoboth (Seekonk) in Plymouth Colony, and finally to the vicinity of Newport, Rhode Island. With understanding he narrates the struggles of the Baptist church in Newport served by this farmer-weaver-pastor in the face of three Six-Principle (Arminian), Sabbatarian, and Quaker.

Readers will be fascinated by Gaustad's account of Holmes's being fined, imprisoned, and whipped "thirty times across . . . the bare back" for his activities as a Baptist visiting in Boston in 1651.
 

184 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1980

About the author

A leading scholar of American religious history, Edwin Scott Gaustad was Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. He earned his B.A. in history from Baylor University (1947), and his M.A. (1948) and Ph.D. (1951) in History of Religions from Brown University.

Reviews

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad to finally have this book about my 9th great-grandfather Obadiah Holmes. Very interesting reading.