Three Baptist historians recently teamed up to write a textbook on Baptist history:
Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn, and Michael A. G. Haykin. The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2015. 46-page PDF sample.
In the final chapter they unpack five Baptist distinctives:
- Regenerate church membership
- Believer’s baptism
- Congregational polity
- Local church autonomy
- Religious freedom
Here’s a six-minute interview with the authors:
See also Jason Duesing’s review.
It is interesting that they do not list New Testament authority as one of the distinctives. Could this be a difference between an understanding of Baptist identity of the North vs the South? Bauder, from the Northern perspective lists NT authority as a distinctive, and indeed this was one of the battles within the votes of the NBC.