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A Review of “Congregation & Campus: North American Baptists in Higher Education”

Drawing upon a decade of work he compiled for the American Baptist Quarterly, William H. Brackney explores the contributions that Baptists in North America have made to Christian higher education. Brackney utilizes a thematic, typological method of investigation, allowing him to address the primary developments of Baptist education in North America without duplicating the work of previous Baptist historians. Although his approach inevitably leaves out a few schools, Brackney’s volume is remarkably comprehensive in its examination of numerous manual labor schools, literary and theological institutions, Bible colleges, theological seminaries, and colleges and universities. Brackney’s essential thesis is that Baptists validated their worldview and religious values by creating a vast assortment of institutions of higher education. Brackney’s argument is persuasive at once as he examines the particulars of a diffuse tradition that has historically valued religious experience over intellectual pursuits and yet, he claims, has formed more institutions of higher education than any other Protestant denomination in Canada or the United States. These church-related institutions raised the educational standards of Baptists, legitimizing the Baptist voice on the North American denominational scene even if Baptists did not speak in unison. Brackney’s starting point is to define what makes an institution a Baptist one. Employing a historical approach, Brackney basically identifies Baptist institutions as those who have at least one