Machen’s Private Racism And Contemporary Public Segregationism

Andrew Bertodatti and Rasool Berry, two pastors in New York City, have written a lengthy critique of a new book by Owen Strachan. My interest in this essay is not to engage with Strachan’s book, which I have not read, nor to . . . Continue reading →

Princeton Seminary Catches Up With Machen On Segregation?

Almost three years ago there was a controversy over the disclosure and publication of Machen’s hitherto unpublished letter to his mother in which he mentioned his objection to B. B. Warfield over the latter’s plan to integrate the seminary’s dormitory. Predictably, Machen was denounced by social progressives. They might have spoken too soon, however, since apparently PTS has come to agree with Machen in principle and practice. Continue reading

The Question Of The Hour In The PCA

The question of the hour is whether missional contextualization requires celibate gay/same-sex-attracted (SSA) “Side B” pastors. The supporters of (or tolerators of) Side B ministers and the novel doctrine that goes along with them would not say that mission-driven cultural accommodation (per . . . Continue reading →

Machen’s Warrior Children, Ed Stetzer, And Beth Moore

John Frame first published his essay “Machen’s Warrior Children” in 2003, in a Festscrhfit (a volume of congratulatory essays usually in honor of a 65th birthday or a retirement) for Alister McGrath. The essay was ostensibly a historical analysis of what happened . . . Continue reading →

Swaim: Machen Was Right

In 1923, a young assistant professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary named J. Gresham Machen published a scathing critique of the worldview animating establishment or “mainline” Protestant Christianity in Europe and America. That worldview, Machen argued in Christianity and Liberalism, . . . Continue reading →

1929 Or 2018?

You will have a battle, too, when you go forth as ministers into the church. The church is now in a period of deadly conflict. The redemptive religion known as Christianity is contending, in our own Presbyterian Church and in all the . . . Continue reading →

Machen’s Letter To His Mother Or What To Do With Dead Sinners?

J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) was born in the American South. He was born fewer than 20 years after the end of the Civil War. He was born to wealth and privilege. He also inherited the attitudes of many in the American South . . . Continue reading →

Resources On Machen, Christianity, And Liberalism

In 1923 J. Gresham Machen, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, published one of the more important books in the modern history of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, Christianity and Liberalism. It was a stirring and cogent defense of the thesis that . . . Continue reading →