Already frail in health, J. Gresham Machen kept his appointment to preach in North Dakota. For someone reared in Machen’s world, the Presbyterian Church was far from being a “little flock,” as Jesus described his church (Luke 12:32). It was powerful in every area of civil and social life.

From a family of Baltimore elites, Machen, born in 1881, had a Harvard Law School–trained Episcopalian father (Arthur Webster Machen) and a Presbyterian mother, Mary Jones Gresham. It was his mother who had the greater influence on his life, teaching her son Greek, Latin, and the classics as well as piano. He enjoyed regular Sunday dinners with Woodrow Wilson and his family after the morning service at Princeton’s Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Machen’s mentor at Princeton Seminary was B. B. Warfield, a fellow Southerner and ardent defender of orthodoxy against creeping moralism and modernism. (Warfield had also nominated Wilson for the presidency of Princeton College.) However, Warfield led the charge to desegregate the college and the seminary, while Machen, sadly, opposed the policy.

Machen’s racial elitism wasn’t uniquely Southern. In fact, Northern Protestant progressives championed an imperialistic vision of an “Anglo-Saxon” Christian nation expanding its influence (and coercive power) to “lesser peoples.” America was the redeemer nation, sacrificing itself to rescue the world—if necessary, by military means. (See Richard Gamble’s The War for Righteousness.)

Without downplaying Machen’s racial prejudice, we should mark his passionate opposition to the inherently racist “Christianizing” program of the progressives. Like Warfield, he didn’t like the Christian nationalism of the Protestant establishment because it confused the gospel with the law and violated the inherent rights of religious minorities. A fierce libertarian, Machen even voted for the Roman Catholic presidential candidate Al Smith. Read more»

Michael Horton | “J. Gresham Machen: Where He Died Is Important” | The Gospel Coalition | July 15, 2026

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