Pearl Buck and J. Gresham Machen

[Rippon]

I have before me David B. Calhoun's book : Princeton Seminary Volume 2. (p.518)

"After Machen's death Pearl S. Buck, noted author and former Presbyterian missionary whom Machen had vigorously criticized because of her liberal views, wrote a tribute to her opponent."

The New Republic of January 30, 1937 quotes her :
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 sceptic nor the honest dogmatist. I wish Dr. Machen had lived to go on fighting them."

In a book by Hilary Spurling called Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth (p.210), the author says there was a "public witch hunt spearheaded by a hard-core fundamentalist, Dr. J. Gresham of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, who charged the Mission Board with scandalous laxity, identifying Mrs. J. L. Buck as the prime culprit and demanding her immediate dismissal as an unbeliever. Machen's challenge was the signal for a further round of accusation and counteraccusation. There were calls for Lossing and as well as his wife to lose their jobs."

I believe Buck's account rather than Spurling's.

I am a fan of Buck, having read about 15 of her books. However, she was not a Christian. She openly said so in numerous places denying cardinal doctrines of the Bible.

 

[Rob_BW]

It's probably been 25 years or more since I've read The Good Earth.

 

[Jerome]

Syracuse Herald, May 18, 1933

Mrs. H. W. Peabody Condemns Views of Mrs. Pearl Buck

Mrs. Pearl Buck, noted author who resigned recently as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church, "is not qualified to speak for Christian women," Mrs. Henry W. Peabody of Beverly, Mass., told the General Association of Regular Baptists convention yesterday.

Mrs. Peabody, 78-year-old missions supporter, said Mrs. Buck's opinions should carry no weight because "she does not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God or rose from the dead."

[Lucy Peabody was founder and president of the Association of Baptists for Evangelism in the Orient, now ABWE, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism]

 

[Jerome]

I am a fan of Buck, having read about 15 of her books. However, she was not a Christian. She openly said so in numerous places denying cardinal doctrines of the Bible.

Associated Press, April 18, 1933

Dr. Cleland B. McAfee, a secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, said Monday he believed the case of Mrs. Pearl S. Buck could be settled by an informal talk with her in the near future.
Mrs. Buck, missionary and novelist, has been charged by some members of the denomination with holding doctrinal views not in accord with those of the church.

"I see no reason why everything should not be cleared up by a conversation," Dr. McAfee said.
He declared Mrs. Buck had not been ordered to appear before the board's meeting to date and expressed a doubt that the body even would consider her case.

Calling the missionary, who is associated with her husband in work at Nanking University, China. "a very fine Christian worker," Dr. McAfee said Dr. J. Gresham Machen, of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, who is preparing an overture to the Presbyterian general assembly asking for Mrs. Buck's removal, "has long been known as a critic of the board of foreign missions."

Dr. Cleland McAfee is the same guy who devised the TULIP acronym!

As I have often said, Cleland Boyd McAfee is responsible for the mnemonic device known as TULIP. He presented it for the first time in 1905

 

[church mouse guy]

I saw Pearl Buck once in a public lecture. When I was in high school, I read every book of hers in the local public library. I bought her book on Korea a couple of years ago but stopped reading it when the Japanese assassinated the Korean Queen. When I saw her, she was talking about all of the children of American soldiers who were left in Asian countries. That was a half century ago, or more.