The Centre for Baptist Studies (formerly the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage) entered a new phase recently when it was renamed and relaunched under the leadership of Dr Christine Joynes (also Fellow in Theology and Director of Studies for Theology & Religion). Here Chris explains what the impact of lockdown has been on the Centre’s activities.
The Centre for Baptist Studies in a time of lockdown…
Following a successful day conference on ‘Baptist Women through the Centuries’ in Michaelmas 2019, we were all ready for our Spring conference on ‘Blake and the Baptists’, with exciting contributions lined up from theologians, English literature and art history specialists. It was scheduled for 21 March, but the Covid-19 pandemic forced us to change our plans. The conference had to be postponed, but we are looking forward to rescheduling this as soon as circumstances permit. We are holding out for this to take place in person not online, because it includes a visit to the Ashmolean Print Room to see relevant art, especially by John Linnell. Did you know that Linnell, who was a patron of Blake in his later years, was for many years a member of Keppel Street Baptist Church in London? We have the church minute books in the Angus Library!
In addition to organising conferences and seminars, one of the Centre’s aims is to raise the profile of the Angus Library and Archive (see Park Bench #3 ‘What’s lurking in the basement?’ for an introduction to some of its treasures). An important plank of this work will be achieved through the new Friends of the Angus, which we have been working on ready to launch in July 2020. We hope that anyone interested in the Angus will join the Friends, by means of a donation (of any amount) towards the preservation or digitisation of important items in its collection. We were already aware of the pressing need to digitise more of the Angus’s contents: the Covid-19 pandemic has made this more urgent than ever.
Friends can choose which volume from our shortlist to contribute towards. My volume of choice is going to be the anti-slavery tracts of Elizabeth and Martha Gurney, members of a prominent Baptist family. These give fascinating insights into female non-conformist opposition to the slave trade and as a result are regularly consulted and very fragile.
In addition to helping preserve and share our collection, Friends will receive a regular newsletter about the Angus and research going on there. We are also planning a regular online lecture series where researchers who have visited the Angus share their work. If you would like to know more about the Friends of the Angus and receive details of our autumn lecture series please do drop us a line at our new email address: fota@regents.ox.ac.uk
Whilst I’ve been working on the Friends of the Angus project, Larry Kreitzer, who manages the Centre’s publications has also been busy, commissioning new volumes, producing hard copies from submitted manuscripts and answering queries. Thankfully the Centre’s books are available on Amazon, so if you are short of reading material over the long vacation you could always order one of our recent volumes, such as Robert Parkinson’s Finding a Friend: the Baptist Encounter with Judaism (2020).
We were delighted that our first ‘online’ CBS lunchtime seminar in Trinity term went ahead without hitch on Zoom. Our topic (‘The Ethical Challenges of Covid-19’), led by Margaret B. Adam and Eleanor McLaughlin, attracted a good audience and generated some really interesting discussion. We are planning to offer the Michaelmas term lunchtime seminar online also, so look out for further details in the autumn.
The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly made a significant impact on how the Centre for Baptist Studies has operated in Trinity term, but it has also given us a strong desire to see our digitisation ambitions realised in our new online world.
