Fundamentalist Baptist John Roach Straton

[rlvaughn]

John Roach Straton, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City, was a fierce fundamentalist Baptist leader of the first quarter of the 20th century. I was quite surprised by this bit of his history of which I knew nothing.

The Unlikely Argument of a Baptist Fundamentalist: John Roach Straton’s Defense of Women in the Pulpit.

John Roach Straton and Uldine Utley made an unlikely pair as they waited for the revival meeting to begin at Madison Square Garden on October 31, 1926.

Since becoming the pastor of New York's Calvary Baptist Church in 1918, Straton had attracted national attention as a leader in the fundamentalist movement, stridently proclaiming the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and the literal interpretation of scripture while lamenting Christian civilization's descent into immorality. Utley was a fourteen-year-old girl from California, who had experienced a divine call to preach the gospel. The two had met at a Bible conference earlier in the year, and now the fiery fundamentalist and the girl preacher stood together before an estimated crowd of over 10,000 in the heart of New York.

Echoing Senex's criticism, the Baptist editors of Virginia's Religious Herald feared the worst about Straton's heretofore impeccable conservative credentials. "We assume, of course, that our good friend, Dr. John Roach Straton, was beyond all doubt," they wrote in July 1926. Yet, the activities sanctioned by Straton made them uncomfortable. The editors of the Western Recorder agreed. "We admire Dr. Straton for his brave defense of fundamental truth," they wrote, but his decision to put a young girl in his pulpit defied rational explanation. "One of the large assets of Dr. Straton in his defense of fundamental truth has been the confidence that Southern Baptists have in him. But Dr. Straton knows very well that Southern Baptists do not stand for that sort of performance," the editors noted. "Our fundamentalist brethren need to be fundamentalists. We sincerely regret that Dr. Straton should weaken his position as a Baptist voice of fundamental truth by putting a woman preacher into his pulpit--we beg pardon, not a woman, a girl child."

 

[Jerome]

I've often noted how so many solid Fundamentalists of years past did not hold the benighted views towards women ministers that most of today's Fundamentalists do.

March 1927 meeting of the Baptist Bible Union.

[John Roach Straton opposed move to bar woman from speaking]

nytimes.com/1927/03/11/archives/rockefeller-grip-on-baptists-scored-head-of-bible-union-warns-the.html

 

[Jerome]

Almost exactly a century ago:

New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1921, p.

"CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH
West 57th St., bet. 6th and 7th Aves.
Rev. JOHN ROACH STRATON, Pastor.
Miss Amy Lee Stockton will speak at both
morning and evening services."

 

[rlvaughn]

I found one revival mentioned in New York in 1920 which included speakers Straton, Amy Lee Stockton, and A. C. Dixon, another prominent fundamentalist. Apparently Stockton was a Baptist (like Straton and Dixon). At least she was a graduate of Northern Baptist Seminary of Chicago.

Oddly, Uldine Utley was a disciple of Aimee Semple McPherson -- though she was eventually ordained by the Methodists.

 

[rlvaughn]

Saskatoon Daily Star, Saturday, December 4, 1920, p. 10

 

[rlvaughn]

In 1913, a group of lay people from the Second Baptist Church of Chicago decided to establish a new seminary committed to preparing men and women for effective service as pastors, educators, missionaries, and evangelists within an evangelical theological context.

Northern’s first president was Dr. John Marvin Dean, pastor of Second Baptist Church of Chicago, and its first student was Amy Lee Stockton of California, who went on to become an effective evangelist and Bible teacher.

History of Northern

 

[rlvaughn]

According to Bauder and Delnay in One In Hope and Doctrine, Stockton regularly preached revivals for other notable fundamentalists T. T. Shields, H. H. Savage, J. Frank Norris, and Oliver W. Van Osdel -- one of the founders of the GARBC and pastor of Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Van Osdel was followed at Wealthy Street by David Otis Fuller.

 

[Jerome]

Yes, here she is featured in the paper of Canadian Fundamentalist T.T. Shields:

Jarvis Street Baptist Church The Gospel Witness April 25, 1929 p. 14 (pdf)

"For the past month special meetings have been held in the Wealthy Street Baptist Church, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, of which Rev. Dr. Van Osdel is pastor, by Miss Stockton and Miss Gould. A large number have come forward and found Christ."

 

[Jerome]

Also favorably reported in the GARBC's paper:

Baptist Bulletin Nov/Dec 1934, p. 4 (pdf)

"Miss Stockton with her associate Miss Rita Gould, are enjoying much blessing from the Lord. They are now in Washington D.C., for two meetings; from there they go to California and back to Michigan."

 

[Jerome]

You can see across the page in the post above the GARBC commending the Fundamentalist Baptist mission of Lucy Peabody (founder and then chairman of the board of what is now known as ABWE).

This was 1934!

It was well into the next century before the Southern Baptist Convention would get a woman chairing the trustee board of Southeastern Seminary (2018!):

Seminary chairwoman: 'God opens the door' - Baptist Press

 

[rlvaughn]

In One In Hope and Doctrine, Bauder and Delnay write about some thinking that Van Osdel's promotion of women preachers (particularly Stockton) was harming the growth and success of the General Association of Regular Baptists. They quote a letter from Harry Hamilton to Van Osdel. Hamilton claims not to be personally bothered by women preachers, but believes it is an issue that could drive a wedge in the Regular Baptist coalition (p. 204).

The editors of the (Southern) Baptist and Reflector in Nashville were not impressed.


Baptist and Reflector, June 2, 1921


Baptist and Reflector, March 26, 1931

 

[Jerome]

Yes, such bigotry was stronger in the South but definitely present among some in the North too.

Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist in DC, mentioned in the second clipping above, is the church now pastored by Mark Dever. According to it's website, it has always been doctrinally conservative. Pastor John Compton Ball invited Amy Lee Stockton to preach there multiple times, from the 1910s to the 1940s.

 

[rlvaughn]

Canipe summarizes Straton's argument as follows.

Straton began his argument by offering precedents of women in both the Old and New Testaments who either prophesied or prayed in public. He then turned his attention to Joel 2 and Acts 2, texts he considered "absolutely determinative in connection with the question of women speaking in public." Joel had declared that God would pour His Spirit upon all people, and that both "sons and daughters" would prophesy. In Acts 2, Peter interpreted the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as a fulfillment of this prophecy, quoting from Joel in his first sermon to the crowd in Jerusalem. If God inspired the prophet Joel to envision women preaching under the power of the Holy Spirit, and if God guided the apostle Peter to declare that the coming of the Holy Spirit had fulfilled Joel's prophecy, then, Straton reasoned, Bible-believing Christians must not dare to silence a woman called by God to preach. As additional evidence in support of the preaching ministry of women, Straton cited 1 Corinthians 11:5, where Paul took such activity for granted, and Galatians 3:28, where Paul declared that in Christ all distinctions based upon gender disappear.

For Straton, the issue of women serving as preachers rested upon the integrity of the Bible as God's inerrant, infallible, and holy Word. Given the fact that, in his reading, the broad sweep of scripture endorsed women as legitimate preachers of divine truth, Straton maintained that texts like 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-12, which command silent submission from women, "must not really so teach but, properly understood, and given their due setting ... must be in harmony" with general biblical truth. The 1 Corinthians passage, he claimed, must be read as a prohibition intended to protect Christian women in Corinth from the slanders and innuendos associated with prostitutes. Straton interpreted the verses from 1 Timothy, meanwhile, as a defense of male authority, as established in Genesis 3, against the encroachments of female usurpers in the church.

 

[rlvaughn]

Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist in DC, mentioned in the second clipping above, is the church now pastored by Mark Dever. According to it's website, it has always been doctrinally conservative. Pastor John Compton Ball invited Amy Lee Stockton to preach there multiple times, from the 1910s to the 1940s.

An announcement with picture from The Evening Star, February 1, 1930.

 

[Jerome]

Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist in DC...is the church now pastored by Mark Dever. According to it's website, it has always been doctrinally conservative. Pastor John Compton Ball invited Amy Lee Stockton to preach there multiple times, from the 1910s to the 1940s.

newspaper article from 1932 states Amy Lee Stockton was returning for the fourth time to Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist Church; in 1940 it was noted she was back there to preach for the twelfth time.

 

[Jerome]

I have in my library:

Lucy Peabody, A Wider World for Women (Fleming Revell, 1936)

Amy Lee Stockton, God's Approval of a Woman Preacher (Stockton Gould Evangelistic Campaigns and Bible Conferences, n.d)



(Lucy Peabody was also welcomed at DC's Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist Church)

Washington Herald, January 09, 1915, p. 5

"11 a.m., preaching by Mrs. Lucy Waterbury Peabody"

 

[Strannik]

Well, I think that first of all we should have a criterion of Truth only in the Word of God, and not in the authority of people from past times.
Many teachers in the Early Church were wrong and even heretics. For example, Origen or the Cappadocian fathers. We are not obliged to repeat their errors and false teachings.
Well, Evangelization or Evangelism, it's still not a service in the Church. Outside people who, without faith and trust in God, a Christian woman has the right or even the obligation to preach about Christ, but in a Christian Congregation at a divine service:
¹² But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. ¹³ For Adam was first formed, then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. ¹⁵ Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.1 Timothy 2:12-15
© Библия Онлайн, 2003-2021.

 

[rlvaughn]

Well, I think that first of all we should have a criterion of Truth only in the Word of God, and not in the authority of people from past times.

I have no disagreement with that whatsoever. When I post something in the Baptist History forum, I am dealing with it as history, not as to whether it meets the criterion of truth. I think Jerome and I disagree on women preachers (based on something he wrote above), but that does not keep us from investigating the history of it -- even when found in surprising places.

By the way, Strannik, welcome to the Baptist Board!

 

[PeacefulLove]

I find this very interesting...however, I hold to only men have the biblical authority to preach and teach the assembly. Women in the pulpit is not biblical. Just because it was done doesn't mean it was right.

 

[Jerome]

Reminder, look at the top of the page before posting, it will say whether it is a "Debate Forum" or a "Fellowship Forum".

This is a Fellowship Forum, not a Debate Forum.