The Death of J. Gresham Machen,
January 1, 1937
Bill Potter - Landmark Events
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First World War shattered, for many intellectuals, what remained
of the philosophical and theological presuppositions that had
undergirded Western Civilization for centuries. While those
ideas had been under attack for generations, the utter
devastation and slaughter of the War had profound implications
for the cultural world that emerged in the 1920s. Liberal
theologians, especially in Germany, seemed to have a free field
of fire against the orthodox Christian views of the Bible’s
authorship, inerrancy, historicity, and accuracy—an influence
known appropriately as “Modernism.” Those challenges raged in
the late 19th Century and early 20th, and now seemed poised to
completely overwhelm the Church. A modest and brilliant champion
from Princeton stepped into the lists to defend the Faith in
America, John Gresham Machen. He became liberal Protestantism’s
greatest nightmare.

J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
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J. Gresham Machen, as he was best known, was born to a very
devout Southern Presbyterian mother, and grew up in a genteel
social milieu in Baltimore, in the last decade of the 19th
Century. He graduated first in his class at Johns Hopkins in the
classics in 1901, and from Princeton Seminary in 1905. Machen
then sailed to Europe to immerse himself in the courses taught
by the greatest modernist seminary professors and philosophers
in Germany. By God’s grace, he saw through the friendliness and
camaraderie of the great liberals, to challenge and refute their
heresies and false assumptions.

Princeton Theological Seminary Class of 1922, during
Machen’s tenure as Professor of New Testament
(1906-1929)
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Upon his return to Princeton as Professor of New Testament in
1906, Machen developed a reputation for his challenges to both
mainstream American pietistic Protestantism and the deadly
cancer of European liberalism. His forthright apologetics came
from a historic and Calvinistic foundation based on the virgin
birth of Christ and the absolute historical integrity of the
Bible. He took a year off to serve in the YMCA canteens in
France during WWI. Upon his return, the intellectual challenges
multiplied as did the controversies that followed his stands
against the liberals.

Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1800s

This Fundamentalist cartoon, first published in 1922,
portrays Modernism as the descent from Christianity to
atheism
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Liberal Protestantism “reduced Christianity to a set of general
religious principles regarding the moral teachings of Jesus,”
and they emphasized God’s love over all of His attributes,
especially justice and man’s accountability for his sin. Machen
asserted that liberalism was not just a form of Christianity,
but an entirely different religion—not the Christianity of the
Bible. His beliefs were rapidly declining in adherents at
Princeton and in the Presbyterian Church USA to which he
belonged, as more and more biblical doctrines were rejected and
replaced by modern philosophical presuppositions. Liberalism
penetrated the foreign mission board of the PCUSA, and in
response, Machen helped create a conservative but “Independent
Board of Foreign Missions,” based on fidelity to the inspired
Word of God. In 1935, he was tried in the Church Courts and
suspended from the ministry for fomenting “schism” in the
Church.
Machen was instrumental in the formation of what became the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination and the creation of
Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, to train ministers loyal
to the Word of God and uncompromising on the historic Christian
doctrines. A number of Princeton theologians joined with him in
the endeavor.

Machen Hall, Westminster Theological Seminary—notable alumni of
the seminary include Francis Schaeffer, Greg Bahnsen and
Alistair Begg, among others

Machen’s 1923 book Christianity and
Liberalism was named one of the top 100
books of the twentieth century by Christianity
Today one of the top 100 books of the
millennium by World magazine
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In December of 1936, he came down with pneumonia while preaching
in North Dakota and died on January 1, 1937, aged 55. Throughout
the post-war era, Machen became the champion of the
“fundamentalists” of America for his ability to meet the
liberals on their own grounds and bring a scholarly and profound
defense of Reformation Protestant theology. While men from other
denominations embraced his defense of the faith, his own church
proceeded to disavow him and the Word on which he stood. J.
Gresham Machen did not fit into the radical fundamentalist
rejection of alcohol, tobacco, and other extra-biblical cultural
appurtenances, but he fought to the death over the historicity
of the Bible, the Virgin Birth, and the Deity of Christ. His
bestselling books took their place among Christian classics: The
Origin of Paul’s Religion (1921), Christianity
and Liberalism (1923), and The
Virgin Birth of Christ (1930), among several
others. With the death of Machen, the Church lost a great
champion who was raised up by God in a volatile time for the
Church in America.


J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Study, by Ned
Stonehouse (Eerdmans, 1954)
Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of
Conservative Protestantism in Modern America, by D.G. Hart
(P&R, 1994)
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