New website, new blog

Towards the end of 2022, we launched our new website and along with it came our new blog. This means that after 15 years of Talking Shop, we will be archiving this blog and any new posts will be found on our website www.christianbookshopossett.co.uk.

Feel free to continue browsing through all the book reviews here on Talking Shop - we would hate 15 years of blogging to go to waste!

Summer Reading Club 2022

Have you spotted our Summer Reading Club discounts? This is a great way to get discounts on our books (new & secondhand) throughout the summer months.

All you have to do is make an order worth over £25 to unlock your discount of 25% off ALL SUMMER! Otherwise, just make an order worth over £15 to unlock a 15% discount. The only thing we ask is that you must be on our mailing list - you can sign up on our website homepage.

Have a look at all the terms & conditions here...

Your sponsored calendars

Thank you again to everyone who sponsored the AV block calendar to be sent overseas. Through your generosity, earlier this year we were able to send 60 calendars out to a contact in Kenya. We have recently received pictures of the distribution of the calendars and our contact has expressed great appreciation for them. He says that they are particularly useful for those who do not have a Bible as it means they will be able to read a little of the Word of God each day. We pray that this precious seed will be made profitable to them.

Reviews are in for Forgotten Reformer - Myles Coverdale

Forgotten Reformer - Myles Coverdale has been deservedly reviewed positively in both the latest 'Evangelical Times' and 'Banner of Truth' magazines. We have plenty in stock for anyone who is interested. 

Click here to buy

We have highlighted this and other significant figures of Bible translation in our latest eBulletin. 

Have a read here...

Baptist Heritage

In our eBulletin this month we have highlighted some of the very best publishers of books in our Baptist Heritage. Have a read through all our recommendations here

If you would like to join our mailing list please sign up on our website... www.christianbookshopossett.co.uk/

Particular Baptist Sermons on the Slave Trade - A Review

We are pleased to see this excellent review published by Baptist historian Michael Haykin of this recent title:

Matthew E. Roe, compiled and ed., Preaching Deliverance to the Captives: Particular Baptist Sermons on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (N.p., 2021), 213 pages. 

One of the most amazing developments in the long eighteenth century has to be the moral and philosophical struggle waged by British abolitionists against the slave trade and slavery. And critical to its success was the key role played by British evangelicals. The name of the Anglican evangelical abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759–1833) is justly famous in this regard. But there were a multitude of others who also made significant contributions to the struggle. This newly-published volume of sermons on the abolition of the slave trade by five Particular Baptist pastors is revelatory of one of these significant contributions, that of the Particular Baptists. 

Matthew E. Roe, who has self-published these sermons, places them in context in a detailed introduction (pp. 3–23). He shows the way that these sermons represent not simply the views of five individual pastors, but those of an entire denomination. Roe begins with the citation of texts from three Baptist associations—the Northamptonshire, the Western, and the Yorkshire and Lancashire—that reveal what one of them called “our deepest abhorrence” of the slave trade (p. 5). The concurrence of individual Baptists such as Martha Gurney (1733–1816), William Carey (1761–1834), Robert Hall, Jr. (1764–1831), John Rippon (1751–1836), and John Collett Ryland (1723–1792) in this detestation are also detailed (p.6–13). Roe notes key themes in the sermons, such as the inherent equality of all human beings, the duty of Christians to promote benevolence, and the utter injustice of the African slave trade (p.13–17). Despite the common Particular Baptist concern about bringing politics into the pulpit, these preachers were convinced that they had to speak to this issue, for it was a moral issue, not a political one per se (p. 19–21). 

The five sermons—preached by Robert Robinson (1735–1790), James Dore (1763–1825), John Beatson (1743–1798), Abraham Booth (1734–1806), and John Liddon (d.1825)—were all preached within a five-year span, from 1788 to 1792, a period of intense activity by the abolitionists to secure the end of the slave trade. It was to be another fifteen years, though, before Parliament abolished the “diabolical traffic” (the words of John Liddon, p. 190). They are all reproduced in full with a minimum of editing. Each of them is introduced by a biographical sketch of the preacher. Following each sermon Roe has assembled various critical reviews that appeared when these sermons were first published. A few of these reviews are quite critical. For my part, however, each of these sermons is a gem and together they provide a fabulous window onto the way scriptural reasoning was the primary influence shaping the arguments of these abolitionists. The sermons by Dore and Booth are especially powerful in their exegesis and application. That by Robinson is probably the weakest of the five. It was preached during the closing years of his life when he was theologically confused—“ruined by pride” was the estimation of the evangelical Anglican John Berridge (1716–1793) (p. 31). Central to Roe’s publishing of these sermons is a desire “to inspire the modern reader when approaching similar issues today.” Slavery and trafficking in human persons still exist in the modern world, as well as “other forms of injustice” and “disturbing scenes of oppression.” And these call for the exercise of Christian benevolence (p. 22). These eighteenth-century preachers do indeed give us a great model to follow. Moreover, though Roe does not mention this, they also provide a substantial critique of some Christians in our day, who wish to mount a defence of slavery. Simply put, their arguments would astonish these Baptist preachers, who are generally far better guides to Scripture and Christian practice. 

Michael A.G. Haykin The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, KY

Published in The Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies, No 4, February 2022.

Happy New Year

We're a little late with our greetings, but we do indeed wish you all the best for the coming months of 2022!

First up this year we have a couple of key titles that we want to highlight to you... they will challenge you to consider the subtle lies that our society is becoming immersed in and how to stand up to these lies with the absolute truths of the Bible. 

Sharon James has written The Lies we are Told, the Truth we Must Hold to show us the dangers of current cultural worldviews and to emphasize that we should not be intimidated by the claims of those who are militantly opposed to the Bible. In a companion volume How Christianity Transformed the World, Sharon has written a helpful historical overview of how Christianity has underpinned our society throughout the ages. Indeed Biblical truths of human worth and freedom have shaped our systems of healthcare, education, justice and more.

We are pleased to be able to offer both these books at a great discount for a limited time. Buy one of them, or get an even better deal on both of them... click here for the details.

To see an interview Sharon gave about her book The Lies we are Told, the Truth we must Hold, please click here