Adams, William (25 January 1807–31 August 1880), minister and seminary president, was born in Colchester, Connecticut, the son of John Adams, an educator, and Elizabeth Ripley. Adams grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where his father was the principal of Phillips Academy. He entered Yale College in 1824, where he received his A.B. in 1827. After college he returned home to study at Andover Theological Seminary and to assist his father in teaching. He completed his seminary training in 1830 and was ordained a Congregational minister. He began service as the pastor of a church in Brighton, Massachusetts, in 1831. He married Susan P. Magoun in July 1831. His wife’s illness forced him to resign from the Brighton pastorate in early 1834, but following her death in May, he accepted a ministerial call to the Broome Street (later Central) Presbyterian Church in New York City. Since the Congregational and Presbyterian denominations then enjoyed a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation, Adams switched denominations and was installed as pastor in November 1834. In August 1835 he married Martha B. Magoun, the sister of his first wife....
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Adams, William (1807-1880), minister and seminary president
Gardiner H. Shattuck
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Alexander, Joseph Addison (1809-1860), Presbyterian scholar and minister
Mark A. Noll
Alexander, Joseph Addison (24 April 1809–28 January 1860), Presbyterian scholar and minister, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Janetta Waddel and Archibald Alexander, a Presbyterian minister. Alexander, who was always called Addison, grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where in 1812 his father was called to be the first professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. At an early age, Alexander displayed the ability in languages that would make him a marvel throughout his life. By the time he began formal instruction with local tutors, his father had taught him the rudiments of Latin and Greek and also introduced him to Semitic languages. By the time he graduated from the College of New Jersey as a seventeen-year old in 1826, he had read the Koran in Arabic, made considerable progress in Persian and Syriac, and begun the wide-ranging study of contemporary European languages that he never stopped. It was his habit, begun before entering college and continuing to the week of his death, to read the Bible daily in at least six languages. Alexander’s nephew and biographer, Henry Carrington Alexander, concluded that he read, wrote, and spoke Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; that he read without helps and wrote Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Romaic, and Chaldean; that he could read Ethiopic, Dutch, Sanskrit, Syriac, Coptic, Danish, Flemish, and Norwegian; and that he knew enough Polish, Swedish, Malay, Hindustani, and Chinese to peruse works in these languages. The linguistic marvel was also a social recluse who never married and who, despite great interest in travel and world affairs, lived contentedly in Princeton as a student and professor his whole life. ...
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Allen, Alexander Viets Griswold (1841-1908), Episcopal priest, theologian, and educator
William L. Sachs
Allen, Alexander Viets Griswold (04 May 1841–01 July 1908), Episcopal priest, theologian, and educator, was born in Otis, Massachusetts, the son of Ethan Allen, a teacher and Episcopal priest, and Lydia Child Burr. His father served churches in Massachusetts and Vermont. Both parents were strongly evangelical in the Episcopal manner of the time, emphasizing biblical authority and teaching more than sacramental theology—a conviction that produced conflict in several of the churches that Allen’s father served. Their piety shaped Allen’s early views, leading him to enroll at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1859. Kenyon was an Episcopal institution then of an evangelical stamp. An excellent student, Allen delivered the valedictory address upon graduating in 1862 and immediately entered Bexley Hall, a theological seminary in Gambier....
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Bacon, Benjamin Wisner (1860-1932), clergyman and theological professor
Gene M. Tucker
Bacon, Benjamin Wisner (15 January 1860–01 February 1932), clergyman and theological professor, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the son of Susan (née Bacon) and Leonard Woolsey Bacon, a clergyman. Bacon grew up surrounded by the traditions, habits and the learning of a family of distinguished New England clerics. His paternal grandfather, ...
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Baron, Salo Wittmayer (1895-1989), educator and Jewish historian
Robert Liberles
Baron, Salo Wittmayer (26 May 1895–25 November 1989), educator and Jewish historian, was born in Tarnow, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Elias Baron, a banker, and Minna Wittmayer. Baron’s orthodox, intellectually enlightened family was one of the wealthiest of the Jewish community in Tarnow. The primary languages spoken in the household were Polish and German. Besides the Barons’ holdings in the town, they also owned an estate in the country and had a share in a family oil field. Private tutors instructed Baron in both secular and religious subjects. He later studied in Kraków and then in Vienna, where he received doctorates in history (1917), political science (1922), and jurisprudence (1923). He also continued his Jewish studies at the rabbinical seminary in Vienna and soon became an instructor in Jewish history at Vienna’s Jewish Teachers College....
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Barton, George Aaron (1859-1942), Assyriologist and biblical scholar
Benjamin R. Foster
Barton, George Aaron (12 November 1859–28 June 1942), Assyriologist and biblical scholar, was born in East Farnham, Quebec, Canada, the son of Daniel Barton, a farmer and blacksmith, and Mary Stevens Bull. He attended the Oakwood Seminary, Poughkeepsie, New York, becoming a minister of the Society of Friends in 1879, and graduated from Haverford College with an A.B. in 1882 and an M.A. in 1885. Around 1883 he moved to Boston, where he worked in insurance for a year, then from 1884 to 1889 taught mathematics and classics at the Friends School in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1884 he married Caroline Brewer Danforth; they adopted one child. In 1889 he entered Harvard Graduate School (M.A. 1890), where he studied Assyriology with David G. Lyon and Semitics and the Bible with Crawford H. Toy and Joseph H. Thayer. In 1891 he received his Ph.D. for a study, “The Semitic Ishtar Cult,” later published in the ...
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Bowne, Borden Parker (1847-1910), philosopher, theologian, and educator
John Howie
Bowne, Borden Parker (14 January 1847–01 April 1910), philosopher, theologian, and educator, was born in Atlantic Highlands (formerly Leonardville), New Jersey, the son of Joseph Bowne and Margaret Parker. His father, a farmer and justice of the peace, served also as a local Methodist preacher. His father was a staunch abolitionist, and his mother, a descendent of Quaker stock, despised sham and vanity. Traits of both parents ran deep in their son....
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Breckinridge, Robert Jefferson (1800-1871), theologian and educator
Gardiner H. Shattuck
Breckinridge, Robert Jefferson (08 March 1800–27 November 1871), theologian and educator, was born at Cabell’s Dale (near Lexington) in Fayette County, Kentucky, the son of John Breckinridge, a lawyer and politician, and Mary Hopkins Cabell. Raised in one of the most prominent families in Kentucky, he attended Jefferson College between 1816 and 1818, spent a few months at Yale College in 1818, and finally graduated from Union College in 1819. After completing his schooling, he returned home to study law. Breckinridge married his cousin Ann Sophonisba Preston in 1823; they had four children. He opened his practice in 1824 and a year later was elected to represent Fayette County in the state legislature; he held that position until 1828....
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Campbell, Lucie E. (1885-1963), gospel composer and teacher
Kip Lornell
Campbell, Lucie E. (1885–03 January 1963), gospel composer and teacher, was born in Duck Hill, Mississippi, the daughter of Burrell Campbell, a railroad worker, and Isabella Wilkerson. Her mother was widowed several months after Lucie’s birth, and the family soon moved from Carroll County to Memphis, the nearest major city. Lucie and her many siblings struggled to survive on their mother’s meager wages, which she earned by washing and ironing clothing. Given the family’s insubstantial income, it could afford a musical education for only one child: Lucie’s older sister Lora. Lucie eventually learned to play piano, however, through her own persistence, a gifted ear for music, and a little help from Lora....
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Carnell, Edward John (1919-1967), theologian and educator
D. G. Hart
Carnell, Edward John (28 June 1919–25 April 1967), theologian and educator, was born in Antigo, Langlade County, Wisconsin, the son of Herbert C. Carnell and Fannie Carstens, a fundamentalist minister and his wife who struggled to support their family by serving several Baptist churches in the Upper Midwest. Carnell attended Wheaton College from 1937 to 1941 and received an A.B. in philosophy. Although he sometimes worked thirty-five to forty hours a week in the dining hall as an undergraduate, Carnell was able to excel in philosophy under the tutelage of Professor Gordon Haddon Clark, whose philosophical defense of Christianity made a lasting impact on a generation of evangelical leaders who attended the midwestern fundamentalist liberal arts college during these years. From Wheaton, Carnell went to Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, an institution that had been founded in opposition to Princeton Seminary in 1929 during the fundamentalist controversy. At Westminster he studied theology with the Dutch Calvinist Cornelius Van Til, whose system of theology stressed the intellectual differences between believers and nonbelievers, and he earned both a Th.B. and a Th.M (1944). Because the U.S. government deferred the draft of seminarians, Carnell did not serve in World War II. In 1944 he married Shirley Rowe, a schoolteacher; they had two children. Carnell went on to complete two doctorates. He first earned a Th.D. at Harvard University (1948), where he wrote a dissertation on the theology of ...
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Carus, Paul (1852-1919), editor, author, and philosopher
Charles S. Prebish
Carus, Paul (18 July 1852–11 February 1919), editor, author, and philosopher, was born in Ilsenburg, Germany, the son of Dr. Gustav Carus, the first superintendent-general of the Church of Eastern and Western Prussia, and Laura Krueger. As the son of a well-known theologian and state church official, Carus was afforded an appropriate Gymnasium education, which focused on mathematics and the classics. He studied at the Universities of Greifswald, Strasbourg, and Tübingen, eventually earning his Ph.D. degree from Tübingen in 1876. His first professional position was as an educator at the military academy in Dresden, an appointment he soon resigned because of conflicts over his liberal religious views. He then lived briefly in England (1881–1884) before traveling to the United States and settling in LaSalle, Illinois, where he lived for the remainder of his life....
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Clebsch, William Anthony (1923-1984), church historian, developer of religious studies, and university professor
Amanda Porterfield
Clebsch, William Anthony (19 July 1923–12 June 1984), church historian, developer of religious studies, and university professor, was born in Clarksville, Tennessee, the son of Alfred Clebsch, an owner of tobacco warehouses, and Julia Wilee. In 1944 he married Betsy Birchfield, a horticulturalist; they had two children....
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Deutsch, Gotthard (1859-1921), Jewish scholar and college professor
C. E. Lindgren
Deutsch, Gotthard (31 January 1859–14 October 1921), Jewish scholar and college professor, was born Eliezer Deutsch in Kanitz (Province of Moravia), Austria, the son of Bernhard L. Deutsch, a merchant, and Elise Wiener. He always called himself Gotthard, an attempted translation into German of his Jewish given name. Deutsch entered Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary in October 1876. While attending seminary classes, he also enrolled in afternoon classes at the University of Breslau. At the seminary, he was influenced by the noted Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz. Matriculating in 1879 at the University of Vienna, two years later he received his Ph.D. in history. While attending the university, he enrolled in a Talmudic course taught by Isaac Hirsch Weiss at Beth Hammidrash. During his studies in Vienna, Deutsch drew inspiration and guidance from both Weiss and Adolf Jellinek, an authority in midrashic research. Shortly after his graduation, Deutsch received Semichah (ordination) from Rabbi Weiss....
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DuBose, William Porcher (1836-1918), theologian
Jon Alexander
DuBose, William Porcher (11 April 1836–18 August 1918), theologian, was born near Winnsboro, South Carolina, the son of Theodore Marion DuBose and Jane Porcher, planters. DuBose grew up in the aristocracy of the antebellum South. After attending Mount Sion Institute in Winnsboro, he went to the Citadel (the Military College of South Carolina), from which he was graduated as the ranking cadet officer in 1855. DuBose next attended the University of Virginia, where he received an M.A. in 1859. Then he entered the Episcopal diocesan seminary, established a year earlier, in Camden, South Carolina, to prepare for ordination. With the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861, DuBose left the seminary for service in the Confederate Army. In April 1863 he married Anne Barnwell Peronneau, and in December of that year was ordained to the diaconate of the Episcopal church. During the remainder of the war DuBose served as a military chaplain....
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Dwight, Timothy (1752-1817), theologian and president of Yale College
William C. Dowling
Dwight, Timothy (14 May 1752–11 January 1817), theologian and president of Yale College, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, the son of Timothy Dwight, a merchant and large landowner, and Mary Edwards, daughter of the theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Dwight gave early signs of extraordinary intellectual promise, learning the alphabet at age two, reading the King James Bible at four, mastering basic Latin grammar at six, and all the while absorbing the standard works in geography and ancient history that later served him, as they did so many Americans of the revolutionary generation, as important sources of classical republican political thought. He entered Yale at thirteen, easily passing an entrance examination requiring sight translation of Virgil, Cicero, and New Testament Greek, and setting himself a private curriculum of studies considerably more ambitious than that of the college. Rising at half past three on winter mornings to construe Homer’s ...
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Dwight, Timothy (1752-1817)
Maker: John Trumbull
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Faruqi, Isma‘il Raji al- (1921-1986), scholar of religion and Islamic social activist
Dina Ripsman Eylon
Faruqi, Isma‘il Raji al- (01 January 1921–27 May 1986), scholar of religion and Islamic social activist, was born in Jaffa, Palestine, the son of ‘Abd al Huda al-Faruqi, a wealthy Muslim judge; his mother’s name is unknown. In 1941 he received a B.A. in philosophy from the American University of Beirut. In 1942 he was employed as a registrar of Cooperative Societies by the British Mandate in Jerusalem, which appointed him in 1945 as the district governor of Galilee. When Israel became an independent Jewish state in 1948, Faruqi fled to the United States and enrolled as a graduate student at Indiana University. In 1949 he graduated with an M.A. in philosophy and was accepted as a graduate student at Harvard University, where in 1951 he earned a second M.A. in philosophy. He then returned to Indiana University, from which he obtained a Ph.D. in 1952. During his graduate studies, Faruqi translated books from Arabic into English for the American Council of Learned Societies. He married Lois Ibsen some time around 1952; they had three daughters and two sons, the younger of which died on a trip to Mexico in March 1986....
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Foster, Frank Hugh (1851-1935), theologian and educator
William H. Brackney
Foster, Frank Hugh (18 June 1851–20 October 1935), theologian and educator, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of William F. Foster and Mary Flagg Miller. He received a B.A. from Harvard in 1873 and graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1877, when he was ordained a Congregationalist minister. In 1881–1882 he was a Parker Fellow at Harvard; the fellowship allowed him to study in Germany, and he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in 1882. He was married twice, first to Eliza Grout in 1877, who died in 1912; they had three children. In 1913 he married Margaret Tracy Algoe, who died in 1920; they had no children....
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Foster, George Burman (1857-1918), theologian and educator
William H. Brackney
Foster, George Burman (02 April 1857–22 December 1918), theologian and educator, was born in Alderson, West Virginia, the son of Oliver Harrison Foster and Helen Louise Skaggs. Foster entered Shelton College in 1876 and graduated from West Virginia University in 1883. He served as pastor of the Baptist church in Morgantown, West Virginia, from 1883 to 1884. While there he married Mary Lyon in 1884; they had three children, none of whom survived Foster. Also in 1884 Foster enrolled in the ministerial course at Rochester Theological Seminary, graduating in 1887. He then served at the Baptist church in Saratoga Springs, New York, until 1891....
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Frei, Hans Wilhelm (1922-1988), theologian and intellectual historian
William C. Placher
Frei, Hans Wilhelm (29 April 1922–12 September 1988), theologian and intellectual historian, was born in Breslau, Germany, the son of Wilhelm Sigmund Frei, a venereologist, and Magda Frankfurther, a pediatrician. The family had become nominally Lutheran, and Frei was baptized in infancy, but they were Jewish by ancestry and thus fled to the United States in 1938....
