About

Welcome

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ and welcome to Happy Historical Baptist!

Happy

My name is Daniel C. Soukup and ​I'm a happy Baptist. I'm not bashful about it, but I'm not belligerent either. I've come to love the Baptist way of following Jesus and whether or not you're a Baptist, I want you to know more about it and consider joining me. Come on in, the water is great

Historical

​I'm a Baptist that is seeking to get to know the rich resources left by believers who have gone before me, especially (but not exclusively) within the Baptist tradition. Until recently, a great many Baptists have been disconnected from their past. I am by no means a pioneer in the recovery of Baptist history and heritage. In fact, I am a Baptist today in large part because others are doing the work of recovery. I am, however, quite excited about discovering it and going deeper into it.

About the Website

This website is devoted to collecting resources I've found helpful from Baptist history, particularly its early days, to help my fellow Baptists know their history and be happy Baptists and to introduce others to the Baptist way. This is by no means meant to be the definitive guide to all things Baptist; it is my exploration of the history of a tradition I have come to hold dear. I hope that you find something helpful here. If you want to know what I believe, check out the Abstract of Principles. This is a short, helpful Baptist confession of faith and one I am in happy agreement with. For a fuller confession of faith that I am in happy agreement with, see the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

About Me

I grew up in a Calvinistic, Baptistic, non-denomination church. In the early 2010s, I began studying Christian Worldview (AA) and Bible and  Theology (BA) at Bethlehem College and Seminary (BCS) during the time the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement was at a fever pitch. Early in my time at Bethlehem, I went through a process that the cool kids these days are calling "deconstructing" faith. Unlike many of the cool kids these days, I ended up, by God's grace, "reconstructing" my faith. Just before I returned to BCS to pursue an MDiv, several close friends became Presbyterian and several acquaintances became Anglican. I had not yet closely examined my views on baptism and I began to explore the arguments for paedobaptism. During this process, I emotionally converted to Anglicanism, though I never actually joined an Anglican church because I did not want to recklessly move my wife and children out of the church we loved. A friend and mentor who walked with me during this time recommended that I read The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology by Pascal Denault. This book went straight to the core of the Covenant Theology that supports Reformed paedobaptism: is the New Covenant a re-administration of the Covenant of Grace or are the Covenant of Grace and the New Covenant identical? Denault argued, and I was convinced, that the Two Administrations model does not make the best sense of what Scripture says about the New Covenant. Through Denault's book, I discovered the confessional Reformed Baptist world and the rest, they say, is history.