The Baptist Quarterly: The First Decade (1922–1931)

ABSTRACT The Baptist Quarterly began in 1922 as a successor to the Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society. In its first decade, the Quarterly was greatly indebted to the Honorary Secretary of the Baptist Historical Society, W.T. Whitley, and the President of the Society and Principal of Regent's Park College, Wheeler Robinson. This article considers how the Quarterly, from 1922–1931, sought to foster historical investigation and also, as Robinson put it, to ‘express contemporary Baptist aims and interests' on ‘a broader basis'. After ten years of the Quarterly, Robinson argued that it had made ‘a wider appeal by including matters of contemporary as well as of antiquarian interest’. In examining in detail that period, this study proposes that five main areas were of greatest significance: contemporary church life and mission; Baptist history in particular places in Britain; international experience; theological and biblical issues; and the more general historical area.