J. Gresham (John Gresham) Machen

Born in Baltimore in 1881, J. Gresham Machen studied at Johns Hopkins University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the universities of Marburg and Göttingen. He went on to teach New Testament at Princeton, where he became known as a careful scholar and a prominent voice in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy within American Protestantism.

Machen is especially remembered for arguing that theological liberalism was not simply another form of Christianity but a different religion altogether, a case he made most famously in Christianity and Liberalism. In 1929, after the reorganization of Princeton Theological Seminary, he helped found Westminster Theological Seminary, where he sought to preserve confessional Reformed teaching and serious academic study together.

His influence extended beyond the classroom. He was also a central figure in the events that led to the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936. Machen died on January 1, 1937, in Bismarck, North Dakota, but his books and public witness have given him a lasting place in American religious history.