Wednesday, June 26, 2024

It is the 26th of June 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

On today’s show we have a rare character- an American abroad in China in the 19th and 20th centuries. She would link the great generation of early Chinese Missions and that of the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy. She would also become a best selling author and the recipient of both a Nobel and a Pulitzer.

She was Pearl Sydenstricker- born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on this, the 26th of June in 1892 to parents Absalom and Caroline (nee Stulting). The couple were home on a furlough from their work as missionaries in China.

The couple had married in 1880, the same year they traveled to Shanghai as missionaries. Absalom would travel throughout China, and Caroline would stay back in Zhenjiang with a growing family. Edgar, born in 1881, would be the only of 4 to survive before Pearl was born. She was educated by her mother before being sent to Shanghai to a boarding school at the age of 15.

Around the time of the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901), the family would head back to the U.S., where Edgar would enroll at an American college. The Family would come back in 1910 on another furlough, and this time, Pearl would stay behind at Randolph-Macon Women’s College, where she would earn a degree and teach for a season in the fields of psychology and philosophy.

She would marry a Presbyterian missionary- a specialist in agriculture- John Lossing Buck- and Pearl would come to the attention of an English speaking audience as “Pearl Buck”. From 1922 she would write articles about Chinese life for American periodicals. From 1925 she would teach English literature in Chinese universities. Pearl Buck became the representative to many Chinese as an American and a great American commentator on all things Chinese.

Despite the fall of the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China the Bucks would stay in China until 1935. Part of her connection to China was her recognition both there and in America for her sympathetic portrayal of Chinese rural life.  This first book to showcase this was 1931’s “the Good Earth” which would win the 1932 Pulitzer and this was followed up by two more works making a trilogy.

Back home  in America from 1935 she turned her attention to biography- writing non-traditional biographies of her parents, non fiction and a number of works under the pseudonym John Sedges.

But she is best known in church history for her role as the daughter and wife of missionaries and the role her book, the “Good Earth,” would have on the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.’s mission board. J. Gresham Machen, a firebrand and professor at Princeton Seminary, took exception to her work being recommended by the missions board to missionaries. Long story short: Machen used Buck’s recommendation as the reason to cease support for the Presbyterian Mission board. This would lead to Machen and others splintering off to form their own mission board and then their own presbytery- what would eventually become the “Orthodox Presbyterian Church.” Machen would remain a critic of Buck but would die unexpectedly in 1937 at the age of 55.

Perhaps the greatest tribute we might give Buck is her kind tribute to a sworn theological enemy- she wrote:

“We have lost a man whom our times can ill spare, a man who had convictions which were real to him and who fought for those convictions and held to them through every change in time and human thought. There was power in him which was positive in its very negations. He was worth a hundred of his fellows who, as princes of the church, occupy easy places and play their church politics and trim their sails to every wind, who in their smug observance of the convictions of life and religion offend all honest and searching spirits. No forthright mind can live among them, neither the honest skeptic nor the honest dogmatist. I wish Dr. Machen had lived to go on fighting them.’

A hat tip to my Father-in-Law Walt Harrah for the quote he shared with me months ago from Buck about the deceased Machen.

Not only does Buck tie together two major movements in the church, the 19th and 20th centuries, but they also gives us a masterclass on how we might remember and treat our opponents- especially those in the household of faith.

She  would live until 1973- feted by presidents and other luminaries, born on this day in 1892 Pearl S. Buck was 80 years old.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and Mark 6: 

45 Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46 After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.

47 Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. 48 He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, 50 because they all saw him and were terrified.

Immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 51 Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of June 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite pearl is easy: the anthropomorphized observation train car from Starlight Express- he is  Christopher Gillespie.

 The show is written and read by a man who reminds you that Starlight Express was our 1980s experiment of combining the majesty of Musical Theatre and Roller Skates… 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.