A Patterned Life

David Bebbington--one of the most influential historians working today--is widely acknowledged as a world authority on religious history. He is also recognized for having devised the Bebbington Quadrilateral as the standard definition of evangelicalism, one of the most important global religious movements of the twenty-first century. In this lively study, Eileen Bebbington--who first met her husband as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge over forty years ago--paints a vivid portrait of the life and thought of this leading scholar. Many who know Professor Bebbington's most celebrated books, such as Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, Patterns in History, The Mind of Gladstone, and Victorian Religious Revivals, will be delighted to learn that his first such effort was actually A History of the Ancient World with Which Is Incorporated Classical Mythology, a duly footnoted, four-volume work written at the age of nine! A Patterned Life is much more than an account of the intellectual development of a preeminent historian; it is a study of a life lived as a disciple of Jesus Christ--a human and often humorous account of eccentricities, an honest acknowledgment of trials, and an inspiring witness to one person's efforts to integrate a deep, earnest Christian faith with the best of modern thought. ""Everyone who knows David Bebbington has a David Bebbington story. Now, we have the David Bebbington story. It is told with grace by his wife, Eileen. She provides, in the Bebbington manner, a thorough and illuminating account. All who have learned from David and his remarkable work will appreciate it."" --George Marsden, author of Jonathan Edwards ""If the personal history of a bookish historian might sound like a very dull subject, Eileen Bebbington's 'life' of her husband, David, upsets expectations. This warmly human and intellectually insightful account is full of unusual insight about an unusually gifted historian--the result is an unusually successful book."" --Mark A. Noll, author of America's God Eileen Bebbington graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, in 1970 and qualified as a teacher in 1971, the same year she and David married. She has published The Maker's Instructions on the Ten Commandments, Derngate Days on her time at school, and two volumes on attachment issues, Stop Wasting My Time and Go Away, People. Eileen lives in central Scotland, where she is a member of Stirling Baptist Church.