Published on January 4, 2022 by Sean Flynt  
Samford history professor Delane Tew
Samford history professor Delane Tew

A new book about about Baptists who challenged the denomination to become more progressive in terms of racial, economic and gender justice includes a chapter by Samford University history professor Delane Tew. More Witnesses to the Baptist Heritage features short biographies of Obadiah Holmes, Thomas Grantham, Anne Steele, Ann Hasseltine Judson, William Knibb, John Mason Peck, Emily Chubbuck Judson, William J. Simmons, Fannie Exile Scudder Heck, Henry L. Morehouse, Hannah Marie Norris Armstrong, Augustus H. Strong, John Clifford, Virginia Broughton, Leslie Lee Gwaltney, Clarence Leonard Jordan, Joseph Martin Dawson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Eric Charles Rust, Prathia Hall, Cora Anne Davis, Addie Davis, William J. Reynolds and Glen Harold Stassen.

Dallas Baptist University historian Michael E. Williams, Sr., gathered the biographies as a follow-up to his 2016 book Witnesses to the Baptist Heritage. Tew contributed that book’s chapter on Adoniram Judson, and introduces the missionary’s third wife, Emily Chubbuck Judson in the new volume.

Tew brings to the work her own perspective as a former missionary as well as her academic expertise in Southern history, women’s history and church history. She contributed a chapter on the role of women in Southern Baptist centralization for the 2020 book A Marginal Majority: Women, Gender, and a Reimagining of Southern Baptists.

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 6,101 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.