Hey. I screwed up. The earliest date for the word “missional” is not 1814, as I blogged last week. That was a bad OCR scan [BAD GOOGLE, NO COOKIE!!] and the word that gets cut off is actually “missionary” and NOT “missional”. Thanks to Robinson Mitchell who had a library check the paper version. The earliest date for “missional” that I have found is a British book from 1883 and I have the actual book (1886) so I can confirm it. More here.
And that means the Brits coined the word and not the Yanks. One should know these things. Rule Britannia! God save the Queen!
OK – you win Mr. Smarty Pants. Given all the crapola going on in the US right now, I don’t want to claim diddly.
Just for the record, the notion of “soul liberty” the idea that “neither the state nor the church can just the consience of the beliver or the heretic” was coined by my 12th and 13th great-grandfather the Rev. Roger Williams – founder of the state of Rhode Island and your beloved Baptists.
you have Baptist roots? And to think people say you have no redeeming qualities??????
oh come on Andrew, Brits, Yanks, we’re all just one big disfunction family, aren’t we?
Who said I have NO redeeming qualities? Neber mind – I don’t think I want the answer. I can name my own faults in alpha or chrono order anyway. Perfect I ain’t.
The themes in my writings are so close to gramps, it kinda freak me out a bit. Yeah, there’s a bunch of Baptist running through my veins coupled with that Anglican ethos (he was an Anglican clergyman but having your books burned by Parliament and banised the bowels of history is enough to make anyone say forget about it.) Though when I say Baptist, I mean as in original use of the term NOT as it’s been co-opeed by the SBC.
Andrew, for a fun romp, you might enjoy exploring how Rhode Island (Rouge’s Island) was in many ways an emerging church community back in the 17th century – it was a haven for religious tolerance and gramps was even teaching the Native Americans how to read. Scandalous you betcha but somehow he managed to raise a family without getting shot or I wouldn’t be here. (He died of natural causes.)
interesting, in the early 90’s, Rhode Island was one of the only places in the USA with a new house church movement underway.
I’m not surprised – this was the state that held out during the Continential Congress and refused to sign the Constitution until that separation of church and state biz was added in.
Also gramps left the Baptists shortly after he founded it and went off in his own diest direction (very controversial in pre-Entlightenment times).
We keep thinking we’re so “new” and as you’re aptly pointing out, we’re reclaiming history for today’s times.