User:Sdbhist

I am Nick Kersten, the Librarian-Historian of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society. I steward the original source records of the Seventh Day Baptist movement. At present, my interest in editing on Wikipedia is simply to improve the clarity and precision of the entries relating to the SDB movement.

Seventh Day Baptist history has been claimed by many Sabbatarian (Sabbath-observing) groups over the years, and many of these claims are marginal or spurious, meant to pilfer SDB history to lend credibility to another movement. My organization has worked closely with other historical organizations to make the claims about SDBs and other groups clear, and my intent here is to both clarify real claims, and, perhaps to learn something I do not know about SDB history.

It is important to know that the first statement in the current SDB Statement of Belief says that "Seventh Day Baptists consider liberty of thought under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be essential to Christian belief and practice. Therefore we encourage the unhindered study and open discussion of Scripture. We uphold the individual's freedom of conscience in seeking to determine and obey the will of God." This means that outside the Statement of Belief there is some variety in beliefs. It is difficult to say meaningful things about SDB doctrine outside the Statement which are not simply a reflection of the personal preferences of the person making the statement. Accordingly, I will be diligent in correcting doctrinal statements which do not adequately reflect real SDB doctrine, as it is reflected in our historical records.

I welcome comments to this page or elsewhere about this topic.--Sdbhist (talk) 16:01, 29 August 2011 (UTC)