This collection of essays is dedicated to William Henry Brackney, one of the leading Baptist historians in North America for the past four decades. Few, if any, Baptist historians of any era have written more extensively, more broadly, or more insightfully on the Baptist people in North America than Brackney. Reared in a hybrid American/Southern Baptist context, Brackney has served as vice president and dean of the American Baptist seminary, Eastern Baptist; as executive director of the American Baptist Historical Society; as dean of Theology at McMaster University and principal of the Divinity College; as chair of the department of Religion at Baylor University; and as distinguished professor at Acadia Divinity College and professor emeritus at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. He currently holds the Pioneer MacDonald Chair of Baptist Theology and Ethics at Carey Theological College in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to this extensive exposure to American Baptists, Canadian Baptists, Southern Baptists, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Brackney has worked extensively in the Baptist World Alliance, where he became acquainted with Baptist leaders from all over the world. The author of numerous books and articles on Baptists, he has written on diverse aspects of Baptist life from a global as well as continental perspective. Brackney knows all Baptists, not simply one clan of this large and diverse family. This makes him a trusted guide to the meaning of the word Baptist. Contributors include: Clinton Bennett, Chris Chun, Keith Clements, Charles W. Deweese, Paul Fiddes, Stanley K. Fowler, Erich Geldbach, Larry Kreitzer, James Stanley Lemons, Thorwald Lorenzen, Roger H. Prentice, John D. Roth, Horace O. Russell, John Shouse, Walter B. Shurden, and Andrea Strubind.
