What Baptists Believe

This is a short and clear expression of, may I say "traditional," Baptist beliefs. Since it is made clear that Baptists do not normally embrace a church hierarchy, variations from congregation to congregation should not be surprising. That being said, I found this very straight-forward and written with a constant eye on scripture references. It might be noted that the author provides some references to early church writers where available. Of course, some doctrines were not widely held or proposed before the Reformation, so early church (pre-1500) support for them will be lacking.Good little book; well worth the small amount of time and money it requires!

This is a clear and concise review of what we as Baptist Christians believe (Southern Baptist). It is easy to read and very helpful in my putting together a 4 week study for our Sunday School for Adults. It helps to know what it is we believe to be sure that we are actually going to a Church that believes as we do.I found this to be well worth the time and the cost.

The title of this book sums up exactly what it is about. I do appreciate the introduction where Hobbs states that being a Baptist means having the right to interpret the scriptures for yourself, thus this really is what one Baptist (Hobbs) believes. Though I find the stance on the wide variety of topics to be that of traditional Baptists.All that stated, this book covers a very wide range of topics that most Christians (not just Baptists) will have opinions about. The book can be read straight through or easily used as a reference as the chapters are all independent of each other, and the chapters themselves are broken down into clearly noted subsections.The reason I gave this book four stars was not because it didn't go into much depth on the various subjects. I think one of the strengths of the book is that it presents a wide variety of topics, and if the reader wants more information about a particular idea, then they can research that on their on.The four stars came from the scriptural references and how Hobbs ties them to the topics. It would be very easy for the reader to skim over the verses that are noted, but when I looked them up, I found that many were taken out of context in order to support his point of view. In my opinion, I think Hobbs' case would have been stronger by leaving out some of those references and maybe just stating that a particular view came from Protestant tradition or an overall theme of the Bible or one of its books.Anyway, this should be a must read for Baptists, and I would suspect that most Protestants would agree with a majority of the views presented. Even if you are not a Christian, but interested in what it means to be a Baptist, this book will give you a great overview, and/or starting point for further research.

Good reading about what the Southern Baptist believe

Teach others

I have been looking for a book to help new Baptists and non-Baptist better understand Baptist convictions. While not all Southern Baptists are identical I think this book does a great job in what it sets out to do.

Information

This is a true classic from 1964 and is one of the best that deals with the subject. It is heavily laced with Scripture references to enable the reader to look up relevant Bible verses that support the doctrinal positions.