1. Who are the Baptists? Beginnings
. The radical reformation: anabaptists and others
. The English Puritan and Separatist movements
. Amsterdam 1609
. General and Particular Baptists in the C17th
. Baptists in the Evangelical Revivals

2. Who are the Baptists today?
. The later development of British Baptist life
. A brief history of Baptists in America
. Oncken and European Baptist life
. Baptists in the majority world
. Baptists and 'baptistic' churches

3. The Baptist vision of the church
. Believers' baptism
. The local church at the heart of God's purpose (including anti-missions movements)
. Congregational church government
. The independence and interdependence of local congregations
. The centrality of preaching and the place of the Lord's Supper
. Charismatic ecclesiology
. Baptist primitivism

4. Christ is Lord, and the believer is free
. Thomas Helwys and the plea for religious liberty
. The Lordship of Christ as the foundation of religious liberty
. Liberty and believers' baptism: a natural match
. 'Soul competency': a different vision of liberty
. E.Y. Mullens and the origin of the concept
. Recent expressions of soul competency
. Politics and religious liberty

5. God's desire to save
. 'Every Baptist a missionary': Ocken and the wider missionary vision
. Mission as a mark of the church
. Hypercalvinism and the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society
. God's covenant of salvation
. Paul Fiddes: the recovery and development of the covenant theme in Baptist theology

6. The high calling of the Christian
. 'Congregations of visible saints'
. The practice of church discipline
. Walking according to Christ's rule: Baptist engagements with Scripture
. Christian Ethics in Baptist perspective
. Holiness beyond the congregation: the 'social gospel' and peacemaking.

7. Conclusion: a vision of Baptist theology