Saturday, February 4, 2012

Anabaptist and Contemporary Baptists Conference Audio

So, Southwestern has done us all a favor and posted the conference audio, which can be found here:
SWBTS Anabaptist Conference Audio
So, with this up, I won't need to provide any more summaries like the one I posted on Italian Anabaptism. However, I may in the next few days post some interactions with a few sessions more along the lines of the "Saving Denck" post.

Two notes:
Some of the speakers are given the title "Dr." on that link, although a few of the speakers are presently finishing up their dissertations. This might be an insignificant misnomer since they will presumably finish and Dr. Misseau had already earned a doctorate in another field.
Normally, I wouldn't care enough to note something like that except that it points toward what I hope does not become a weakness as this conference becomes, as planned, an annual event. Several of the speakers presented either their recent or upcoming dissertations (in the cases of McDill and Woodbridge, I had their dissertations open on my laptop and watched them trace through a summary of that material). This in no way detracts from the value of their work but does give rise to a concern that if the conference has in this first year nearly exhausted recent and current doctoral students' work within Baptist circles, then this does not bode well for a sustainability for an annual conference. SWBTS will have to rely on more than summaries if they hope to sustain the conference unless a large wave of Anabaptist scholars come through Baptist Academia in the coming years. This would actually be quite desirable. On the other hand, since this summary material is now largely covered, this would open the door to presentations of fresh material to be presented, especially as the conference (hopefully) gains traction. SWBTS being my alma mater, I would like to see this succeed, but at the same time I recognize that not every year can be approached in the same manner.

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