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Reckoned Among the Nations: Denominational Identity in the Philadelphia Baptist Association, 1688-1832
Jessica Madison, author
Baptists who migrated from England and Wales to the Delaware Valley brought with them conflicting ideas about what it meant to be a Baptist. Doctrinal, cultural, and political differences shaped two competing interpretations of denominational identity, as envisioned by “outsiders” and “insiders.” At the associational level, the contest demanded a certain degree of consensus, and by the early nineteenth century the Philadelphia Baptist Association had committed to an assimilationist path that would make them “reckoned among the nations.”