Thursday, August 3, 2023

It is the 3rd of August, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

If your understanding of the Christian world in America came only from the news, you might be forgiven for thinking there is only one kind of Baptist- that of the Southern Baptist variety. But in fact, there have been scores of Baptists since Roger Williams was first banished to Rhode Island to start his church there- and the northern Baptists, today the American Baptist Church USA (formerly the Northern Baptist Convention) represents a kind of “mainline” Baptist- the often-overlooked cousin of the SBC. And, it might make sense that its greatest theologian has been likewise overlooked by American Church history- but this makes him no less significant. He was Augustus H. Strong, and he was born on this the 3rd of August in Rochester, New York, in 1836.

This puts him right in the cradle of the Second Great Awakening and his father, Alvah Strong, who came to faith at a revival led by Charles Finney. Augustus did not grow up in the faith, but as his father would become the treasurer at the local Rochester Seminary, Augustus, after graduating high school, would help his father out there (he graduated high school early and had to wait to enter Yale- he would graduate in 1857. But, in college, he too attended a revival led by Finney and eventually came to faith, albeit in the Reformed Baptist tradition that differed from Finney.

Augustus would enter Rochester Seminary and graduate in 1859. He was engaged to Julia Finney, Charles’ daughter, but she broke off their engagement. He married Harriet Savage in 1861, the same year he was ordained. He took his first call to First Baptist Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and served there until 1865, when he took a call to First Baptist in Cleveland, Ohio. By now, his reputation as an orator and scholar made him what one historian called the Baptist “statesman at large.” In 1871 when the President of Rochester Seminary left for a position at Brown, he was offered a position teaching theology. Strong replied that he would take the job so long as he was also named President. They agreed, and he presided over Rochester, his alma mater, for the next 40 years.

Under Strong, the seminary became a major player in the North East and in the world of post-Civil War, pre-World War I seminaries with the likes of Princeton and Union in New York. It did not hurt that he was close friends with John D. Rockefeller, who helped endow the school. Strong’s son Charles would marry John’s daughter Bessie.  

Strong is perhaps best known for his multivolume Systematic Theology, which he first published in 1886 and went through 7 editions. Carl Henry wrote of it, “Among Northern Baptists, no theological treatise has been more influential.” Alistair McGrath has written that this work served as the via media (the middle way) between a very conservative Princeton theology and the emerging liberal theology at Union and elsewhere.

Strong thought Darwin probably best explained scientific origins but rejected any theology that would dismiss the realities of Christ’s miracles and resurrection.  He would reject a theory of inspiration that saw the writers as automatons but also rejected any theory that downplayed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He is doing this, teaching, speaking, and writing in those days before the split at Princeton and the beginning of the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy. He died in 1921 before the splintering. And he was, in fact, neither, and as the world of American Protestantism hardened into two factions, Strong was found without a home. His work has thus been categorized as liberal and conservative. Grant Wacker, a historian and authority on Strong, concluded that he was “best understood as a tragic figure, forced to choose between incompatible yet, in his judgment, equally cogent conceptual worlds.”

In his monumental study of Strong’s life and thought- Augustus H. Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness (side note: this was one of the books that changed my thinking about history and theology) rather poetically suggested that Strong helps us make sense of the theological world in America both before and after the Modernist/Fundamentalist split- he wrote of Strong: “Uncertain pilgrims are sometimes more useful than clear-eyed prophets.” Augustus Strong, born on this the 3rd of August in 1836, died in 1921 at the age of 85.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and the book of Philippians.

12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 3rd of August 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite Augustus is a slam dunk, Augustus Gloop- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who can’t believe the kid drowns in a chocolate river- that’s the worst- I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.