J. Gresham Machen and the Problem of Christian Civilization in America

January 8, 2008

By most measures the significance of J. Gresham Machen is minor. Few outside the world of conservative Presbyterianism know about the man once recognized as the most articulate and intelligent proponent of historic Protestantism in the United States. Indeed, most assessments of Machen highlight his historical importance, a sure sign of fading significance. As early twentieth-century fundamentalism’s lone scholar, Machen is best remembered for his involvement in the ecclesiastical and cultural struggles of the 1920s, the time when the term “fundamentalism” was coined. From 1923, the publication date of Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, until his sudden death in 1937 at the age of fifty-five, Machen was the fiercest critic of Protestant liberalism, proving to be especially nettlesome for officials in the Northern Presbyterian Church (PCUSA).

Over the course of the fundamentalist controversy Machen founded a new seminary (Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929) to protest theological changes within the administration of Princeton Seminary, the institution where he had taught New Testament since 1906 and established a reputation as one of the leading authorities in the United States in New Testament scholarship. In 1933 he accused the Presbyterian foreign missions establishment of harboring theological modernism, criticized the revered missionary statesman, Robert E. Speer, forced the novelist and missionary, Pearl Buck, to resign from the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and established a rival and independent missions agency (The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions).

In the end, Machen’s temerity forced the allegedly tolerant and mild-mannered Presbyterian leadership beyond the limits of Christian unity and good will. In 1935 the church tried and suspended him from the ministry for his renegade ways. Yet, despite the controversial conclusion to his rocky and distinguished career, Machen maintained his reputation as the most articulate, the most consistent, and probably the most ardent proponent of the Christian religion as defined by the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. . . .

The entirety of this essay by D. G. Hart is available here.

Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestant by Hart, D.G.

Posted in Book, Church History, Division, Doctrine, J.Gresham Machen