JEFF STRAUB’S LATEST BOOK
The Making of a Battle Royal
“The Making of a Battle Royal is a valuable retelling of an old and important story: the rise of the liberal views of the Bible and theology in the Northern Baptist Convention. Jeffrey Straub provides well-documented and informative accounts of the thoughts of the leading theologians in the denomination who reshaped its dominant theology in the era leading up to the fundamentalist versus modernist controversies.”
—George Marsden, University of Notre Dame
“Nineteenth-century liberal theology claimed to be about life and freedom. In reality, it brought spiritual death and bondage to the then-current mentalité. The story of this devastation among Baptists in the northern United States, one that especially involved the seminaries, is now definitively told by Professor Straub with both a depth of scholarship and verve that are truly admirable. A profoundly insightful work and must reading for all concerned with handing on our most precious faith.”
—Michael A. G. Haykin, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
JEFF STRAUB’S LATEST BOOK
The Making of a Battle Royal
“The Making of a Battle Royal is a valuable retelling of an old and important story: the rise of the liberal views of the Bible and theology in the Northern Baptist Convention. Jeffrey Straub provides well-documented and informative accounts of the thoughts of the leading theologians in the denomination who reshaped its dominant theology in the era leading up to the fundamentalist versus modernist controversies.”
—George Marsden, University of Notre Dame
“Nineteenth-century liberal theology claimed to be about life and freedom. In reality, it brought spiritual death and bondage to the then-current mentalité. The story of this devastation among Baptists in the northern United States, one that especially involved the seminaries, is now definitively told by Professor Straub with both a depth of scholarship and verve that are truly admirable. A profoundly insightful work and must reading for all concerned with handing on our most precious faith.”
—Michael A. G. Haykin, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Praise for The Making of a Battle Royal
This is an excellent addition to the literature on American Baptist history. Well researched and well written, it offers a fine-grained treatment of the rise of liberalism in the country’s Baptist seminaries.… It tells a powerful story to which many will relate. Along the way, it sheds light on the ways in which an emphasis on freedom by modern Baptists, untethered from the confessional traditions that gave them birth, turned a people known for the strictness of their Christian faith and practice into typically modern heralds of ‘the right of private judgment.’
—Douglas A. Sweeney
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Battle Royal shows, in sum, that the pyrotechnics set off by Harry Emerson Fosdick in the 1920s were prepared decades before. They took shape in the place where ministry—sound or unsound—is often incubated: the seminary. Though this sturdy text is academic in tone and format, I was gripped in my own analysis of the text by how urgently missiological Straub’s academic scholarship is.
(Click to read the review)
—Owen Strachan
Midwestern Baptist Seminary
—Tom J. Nettles
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
CHURCH HISTORIAN &
INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR
Jeff Straub
Jeff is an experienced professor of Christian history and theology. In 1990, the Lord gave Jeff and his wife a wonderful son who has special needs. Due to issues related to the pandemic, Jeff has had to curtail his travel plans to concentrate his energies on loving his wife and son. When things change, Jeff hopes to again travel internationally to train Christian leaders. He continues to publish in the field of American religion. Research interests include Baptists and slavery, racism and freemasonry, as well as Pentecostalism, and global Christianity. Jeff has taught around the world including Canada where he resided with his family for his first nineteen years of ministry; Romania, Russia and the Ukraine in Europe; India and a limited access country in Asia; as well as Zambia and Kenya in Africa. He also speaks in US churches as the opportunities arise.
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy – Historical Theology (Baptist Studies), Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY, 2004.
Master of Divinity – Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, Allen Park, MI, 1994.
Master of Arts, Bible – Bob Jones University, 1980.
Bachelor of Arts, Bible – Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC, 1978.
PROFESSIONAL TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Plymouth, MN, Professor of Historical Theology, 2009–2020.
Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Plymouth, MN, Professor of Missions, 2008–2020.
Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Plymouth, MN, Associate Professor of Historical Theology. 2006–2009
Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Visiting Lecturer in Historical Theology, 2004–2006.
Select Writings
Essays on Pastors T. T. Shields and Norman Street
“A Young Man’s Difficulty with His Bible” The Story of W. H. P. Faunce
William Button, London Pastor and Publisher
Sola Scriptura and the Second London Baptist Confession, 1689
“Letters to a Skeptic”: The Final Correspondence between Augustus Hopkins Strong and His Son Charles Augustus Strong. pp 97–115
Entries by Jeff Straub in the Essays on Particular Baptists in America Series
William Hickman and Squire Boone, v. 4; John Patton, v. 5; Stephen Smith Nelson, v. 7; Alfred Bennett, v. 8; Jacob Brouner, v. 9; John Dowling, v. 10; Hezekiah Harvey, v. 11; Thomas Todhunter Shields, v. 12. (Click to go to the Particular Baptist Press website).
Contact Jeff
chhistorian@comcast.net