Nancy Hayden Day, Baptist Fundamentalist

[Jerome]

Mrs. J. Dabney Day took a leading role at 1926 Northern Baptist Convention, advocating for W.B. Riley's attempt to exclude Harry Emerson Fosdick's Park Avenue Baptist Church.

T.T. Shields commended her bold stand in his paper the Gospel Witness. Note especially his concluding plea.

https://tbs.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/1926-05-27_VOL.-05.pdf

"One very interesting and moving feature of the debate was the appearance on the platform of Mrs. Day, of Los Angeles, Calif. She was given five minutes and pleaded with passion and power that the delegates stand by the Word of God. Mrs. Day's support of Dr. Riley's amendment was to us most suggestive. In the Great War, while the men went to the frontline trenches, the women turned to every kind of service usually performed by men at home. They worked in munition factories, and even on railways, and cars, and buses, and elevators, as well as in nursing and those special branches of service in which women usually exercise a tender ministry. And in this war against modernism, we shall have to enlist the women; we shall have to form women's organizations; we shall have to get our women instructed in these matters; and we are sure they will become a mighty auxiliary to the rest of the army".

 

[Jerome]

The next year, Day's husband (a banker) was nominated by Robert Ketcham to lead the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society:



"Rev. Maurice A. Levy , Recording Secretary of the Northern Baptist Convention, reported that in the voting for the election of officers...1,585 were for the nominations as presented by the Committee on Nominations, 458 were for the nominations presented in the list of nominations offered by Rev. R. T. Ketcham"

 

[Jerome]

a newspaper report

"Modernists Control Baptist Convention
CHICAGO, June 4.—Modernists today were apparently in control of the Northern Baptist convention as a result of the victory of the Rev. Charles A. Brooks, Chicago, in balloting for the presidency of the American Baptist Foreign Mission ary Society. The Rev. Brooks and the rest of the modernists candidates emerged victorious over the fundamentalists, headed by J. Dabney Day, Los Angeles."

 

[Jerome]

The 1927 convention was the last straw for some Fundamentalists like Ketcham and Lucy Peabody (she went on to found Fundamentalist mission ABWE).

J. Dabney Day passed away in 1929, Nancy Hayden Day in 1937.
The monument at their grave (a massive open Bible) is featured in tours of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery:

 

[Jerome]

Earlier, Nancy Hayden Day's father had been instrumental in the withdrawal of many Texas Baptists from the SBC to form the Baptist Missionary Association:

Samuel Hayden

 

[Jerome]

An account of the 1929 funeral of J. Dabney Day, by the newly-arrived president of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles:

The King's Business

"I attended the funeral of a Los Angeles banker. It was a beautiful home. The casket that contained the mortal body of Mr. Dabney Day lay in the midst of a most gorgeous display of flowers, but the man was not there. He had gone to be with his Lord. He had been greatly loved by those who knew him. A thousand people were present in and around that home, among them the leading business men of this great city. There was every evidence that the man who had gone had been true to his Saviour in his social, business and home life. Three ministers officiated. There were no cheap words spoken, for they were faithful to their Master. The singing rang true to the Gospel. One of the ministers, a faithful evangelist, gave an invitation to publicly confess Jesus Christ as Saviour, and five strong business men stood to their feet. It was a day of triumph. It warmed my soul. It made me want to be a better man. Why? Because the Christian who had gone home had allowed Jesus Christ to be the Master of his life among his business associates; they had seen Jesus in him. And because his lonely wife could stand by the casket of her dear one and rejoice in his triumph. She might have cried out in the agony of her soul, and we would not have criticized her. Most people cry in like circumstances, but she sang praises to God. She made a pulpit out of her circumstances, five men were saved, and we all rejoiced that we had seen the Lord at work"

 

[Dr. Bob]

Wonderful human-interest story that makes the tragic demise of the Northern/American Baptist Convention more than just academic history.
Thanks