J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Transcription

Camden Busey: This program is a production of the Reformed Forum, an organization devoted to producing and distributing Reformed theological content for a connected age. Online@reformedforum.org this is Christ the Center episode 238.

Today we speak with Dr. Barry Waugh about Machen’s time on the front in World War I. Welcome to Christ the Center Doctrine for Life, your weekly conversation of Reformed theology. This is episode number 238. My name is Camden Busey. We have another fun program lined up for you today. Let me introduce to you our panel. We have Geoffrey Waddington, who is teacher of the congregation at Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ringos, New Jersey. Welcome back, Jeff.

Geoffrey Waddington: Oh, it’s good to be here, Camden.

Camden Busey: And you’re going to have an augmented title here soon, aren’t you?

Geoffrey Waddington: Lord willing, beginning the first Sunday in August, I will be serving as stated supply at Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, retaining your teacher of the

Camden Busey: congregation status until they can find a pastor or call a pastor, you’re going to be working there. That’s great to hear. It’s great to have you on and we look forward to our discussion today. We’re very excited to welcome to the program for the first time doct Barry Waugh. He is the editor of a fantastic new book titled Letters from the Front. He also transcribed many of these letters, which are Jay Gresham Machen’s correspondence from World War I. Welcome to the program, Barry. It’s great to have you.

Barry Waugh: Thank you, Camden. It’s nice that you have me on to interview me.

Camden Busey: Oh, sure. Well, it’s great. We appreciate you taking the time out of the day. We mostly appreciate you putting this book together. And we’re going to dive into it today, asking questions about Machen, learning about his life and this period in his life that is so significant, the time in which he served as a YMCA secretary on the front in World War I.

But before we get into discussing our book, I should mention that Christ the Center is listener supported. We encourage you to visit our website today if you can. If you’re not driving, get on your computer or on your phone and Visit us@reformedforum.org Donate to pledge your support today. We’re very much in need. We have expenses and it does cost to record these programs and to distribute them. And so as we receive support, we’re able to distribute them to many people free of charge, anyone who wants them. And things have been slow in the summer months, so we encourage you to visit us online today. ReformedForum.org donate thank you so much for your support of everything we do here at Reformed Forum and this particular program. Christ the Center. Well, guys, this is great. Now, Jeff, have you been able to look through this title and what were your thoughts when you first saw this? Letters from the front. Jay Gresham Machen’s correspondence from World War

Geoffrey Waddington: I. Oh, I was excited about it because I’m familiar with some of the letters that made it into Ned Doanhaus biography of Machen, right?

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Geoffrey Waddington: So I already was interested. This is like preaching to the choir, right?

Camden Busey: Yeah, exactly.

Geoffrey Waddington: I wanted to get. I still do, of course, want to get my hands on the books to see more of what he said. I am assuming that this is a lot of correspondence with his mother, but maybe there’s other letters to other people as well, like Armstrong. Is it Armstrong?

Camden Busey: Some family members and other people we can get into.

Geoffrey Waddington: Yeah.

Camden Busey: Now, Barry Arthur, the first time I saw this title, I realized that you transcribed and edited. I’ve done a little bit of work with the Cornelius Van Til archives, and maybe someday it’d be fun to try to do a project like this. But it became quickly, very quickly apparent to me that this is a tremendous effort.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of putting this book together? How do you take an actual physical paper letter, a whole bunch of them, and then get them to the point in which they can be published as a book? What does that involve?

Barry Waugh: What I did was I obtained photocopies of the originals through Grace Mullen, who is the archivist at Westminster Seminary, and then just put them in chronological order and went through and started transcribing. I found that the handwriting, compared with some of the handwritings I’ve worked with, is really pretty good. Even in the situations where Machen was under stress and in a hurry and you start to learn people’s quirks and their habits and that sort of thing. And as time goes by and you get through more and more letters, they go faster.

But in terms of the time I was involved in the actual transcription, I really don’t know because it was stretched over about three years, hitting bits and pieces here and there. But I’ll say, in comparison, I think one of the worst handwriting I ever have seen is B.B. Warfield. And he must have had an absolutely remarkably gifted and patient secretary to take his book manuscripts and put them into a typed form.

Geoffrey Waddington: So.

Barry Waugh: So, in other words, I enjoy it. I mean, his primary source material. It’s material that most people would never see unless they decided to go to Westminster and read the original letters. And I’m happy with making the letters available to people now.

Camden Busey: You’ve noticed also that there were some quirks and challenges dealing with the fact that Machen wrote with a fountain pen. In one case, you say he called one of his fountain pens. I think it was a watering can.

Geoffrey Waddington: Right.

Camden Busey: I mean, what type of challenges did that pose? Just the fact that Machen was writing with, you know, wasn’t typing and wasn’t even writing with a ballpoint pen, but was writing a. With fountain pen.

Barry Waugh: The pen he mentioned was a replacement pen, his fountain pen that he loved dearly. I believe he lost it. So he bought a pen there somewhere in France and mixed up, apparently his own ink, and it just didn’t work. Well, I think I mentioned in a footnote that if he would have mixed the ink powder with linseed oil instead of water, the ink would have probably worked pretty well. But at times the letters tended to bleed together with his watering can pen. And he had a habit of going back over things to correct them instead of making his corrections between the lines. So then you’d have these two bleeded in words on top of each other. And so sometimes it was kind of hard to figure out what was going on.

Camden Busey: I see. Well, you’ve done a tremendous job and, you know, the editing involved here. I just wanted to, as we began, to let the listeners know how much work goes into something like this. I mean, we just live in an age of copy and paste on a computer or even optical character recognition, and that’s just not possible with these letters. So Dr. Waugh has done a tremendous service for us in bringing us these letters.

Now, I should step back just in terms of history. Can you place this time period in context for us? Can you describe for us roughly the dates of World War I? Because many of us are very vague on our historical knowledge, unfortunately. When did this start and what time period roughly was this in Machen’s life? What was he doing at the time?

Barry Waugh: Well, the war is generally considered to have begun with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, June 28, 1914. And because of treaties between countries and alliances and all these other things, several countries were brought into the conflict. And the war had been raging for three years or so. When the United States entered the conflict, the United States entered very slowly. It was ill prepared to get involved in the war. There had been a spirit of pacifism and don’t get involved.

So when the United States did enter, it was at a crucial time because the Germans were getting ready for their annual Spring offensive, the Russian Revolution had taken place and the Germans were able to pull troops from the Eastern front and make them to strengthen the Western front. And they were planning on just running the French over in France. And so Pershing and the American troops entered the battle and along with that there came the need for support work.

And again, the military was ill prepared for that. You know, soldiers need razor blades and snacks and cigarettes and the other things that they use. And so the YMCA got involved in that support type of work. And that’s how Machen got involved. And he was one of, I think it was 1300American YMCA directors and may have been even more than that, but pretty substantial operation. Raised a tremendous amount of money to help the soldiers out with writing paper and entertainment and sports and the other things that the soldiers would want to do when they were able to have downtime from the trenches.

Geoffrey Waddington: How is it that Machen became involved with the YMCA over in France at the front, as opposed to, say, being a soldier or serving as a chaplain or serving as a medic in the ambulance corps?

Barry Waugh: Machen did not feel that as a minister he could be involved in a combatant role. He investigated being a chaplain, decided not to go that route until he investigated his options with regard to other things that he could do to help in the war effort. And he decided on the ymca. It’s kind of interesting that he was introduced to the YMCA by J. Ross Stevenson, who happened to be one of the leaders of the ymca. And he mentioned early on that he wasn’t really happy with that. It was not an ideal situation, but that. That he thought it was a compromise he could make to help the soldiers and contribute to the war effort and bring the war to an end.

Geoffrey Waddington: What was he doing at the time that he joined the ymca?

Barry Waugh: He was assistant professor of New Testament literature and exegesis at Princeton Seminary.

Geoffrey Waddington: Okay, did. Now, I know the answer to this question, but folk in the listening audience may not. But did Machen have any strong convictions about the war? Knowing. You know, and you may want to fill in the details, but initially Woodrow Wilson, who had been president of Princeton University and then became governor of New Jersey and then president of the United States, didn’t he run on a stay at out of the war ticket? Or is my memory.

Barry Waugh: Yeah.

Geoffrey Waddington: Okay, so what does Mason’s. Go ahead.

Barry Waugh: I was just gonna. I just said yes. That was Wilson’s policy. I mean, it’s part of the reason the troops had so much trouble getting mobilized to go. They were. They were not. You know, that was Wilson’s plan, you know, let’s stay out of this.

Camden Busey: But then that the U boats had sunk some freight liners and the U.S. it became apparent that it just really wasn’t realistic to stay out of it. Is that correct?

Barry Waugh: Yes.

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Barry Waugh: In the spring of 1918, as I mentioned earlier, it was going to be a crucial time. And the US Entered the conflict technically in, I believe it was April of 1917. And they actually did not see any combat until the fall of 1917. They were very slow getting mobilized and getting people over there and getting set up for conflict. So it was. America just wasn’t ready to be involved. But it was necessary that America could become involved. I don’t know what would have happened if the American troops had not been there when the Germans made their big onslaught in the spring of 1918. Most likely, I think they would have made their way to Paris and things would have been different.

Camden Busey: Now, how long did Machen serve in the ymca? How long was he overseas?

Barry Waugh: He was there from January of 1918, early January, until. The spring of 1919, in March.

Camden Busey: Okay. It’s a little over a year. And did he just. Was it typical for, you know, professors or other people to be involved in some way? Did they just give him a, you know, leave of absence or how did that work with his relationship being an associate or assistant professor?

Barry Waugh: I think he just. He took a leave of absence. It was, you know, his opportunity to go and help, and it was common. One of the things in the letters that was interesting was that here he was going over to help out with the war effort, and there’s several comments in there about him not being able to pay his taxes. Apparently he was, you know, here he is overseas and the government wouldn’t even give him a break on filing his income tax return.

Camden Busey: So things you got to worry about, that’s the last thing you want to handle when you’re hearing mortar fire and, you know, the IRS is getting down your back.

Geoffrey Waddington: And remember the income taxes introduced, I believe, because of World War I, isn’t it?

Camden Busey: I don’t know.

Barry Waugh: I don’t know.

Camden Busey: Things were different then.

Barry Waugh: I really think that the income tax was at least partially driven by coming out of the robber baron era and, you know, the guys that made their massive fortunes without paying much in the way of taxes.

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Barry Waugh: Right.

Camden Busey: Now, what war activities or consequences of war did Machen witness? He was on the front. But what. What was part of his experience?

Barry Waugh: Well, he saw some combat. He saw battlefields with equipment and bodies on the battlefield. He saw observation balloons he talks about the noise of the aircraft and machine gun fire. You know, again, he was behind the trenches. He was not close enough to really have the sense of the horrors of trench warfare. But he makes comments like, it would be wonderful to see a whole piece of glass somewhere, you know, that all the windows around were shattered. And at one point he mentioned hearing a child, you know, and it was the first child he’d heard. And he didn’t know how long helping an elderly man at a train station, you know, who was having a lot of trouble.

And the whole war was just this huge catastrophe, as wars generally are. We think about the glory of war, which I don’t. Doesn’t particularly float my boat. I think of war is horror, but war is tragedy. And it’s just the people that are the non combatants, at least in terms of the field of conflict, are the ones who suffer. You know, the French people having to roll down the street with a little wagon full of what goods they could save as the Germans advance.

And the whole situation was terrible. And Machen saw some of it. He saw a man, I think it was outside the door of one of the buildings he was in. And he helped in first aid stations, he calls them dressing stations, but we would call them first aid stations. And it was. It had to be a great transition to be involved in the war, coming from the background that he came from. He came from a wealthy family, he was privileged. He had the best in education. He had his suits tailor made. And here he was fighting in war with the same uniform he’d been wearing for months. He hadn’t bathed in months. He found himself jumping into shell holes full of water to avoid shell fire. You know, it was. It had to be a special transition for him.

But he doesn’t really complain about it. He comments on it. You know, I had to jump in a shell hole to get away from danger. But he doesn’t complain. And part of the reason he couldn’t complain or I think motivating his lack of complaint is the fact that guys were dying and he was a minister and, and he wanted to do what he could do to help.

Geoffrey Waddington: Yeah, Barry, he went into the war not convinced that the British were necessarily completely on the side of right, nor that the Germans were completely on the side of wrong. However, I think at some point, seeing what you’ve just described, he came to the conclusion that the Allies had to win the war. Is any of that expressed in the letters?

Barry Waugh: Yeah, he. Well, I don’t know that he specifically mentioned that the Allies had To win the war. He did talk a bit about that when the war was over, he was going to be a proponent of peace whenever he could. That having seen the horrors of the war, he was going to support efforts for peace. I think that by the time he had decided to go with the YMCA overseas, I don’t. Can’t think of any specific mentions of this in the letters, but by the time he decided to go, he realized, you know, this is the best thing I can do. Not only is it best in terms of my. Of his calling as a minister, but it was best in terms of the hoped for result, which was the defeat of Germany and their allies. So, you know, I think he had to accept that to be involved.

But you’re right, he had struggles. He had spent time studying in Germany. He had a love for the German people. He saw their side of things maybe as other people would not have seen their side. He was an opponent of the draft. You know, he had struggles. He fought through any issue that came up. It was. And what makes him interesting is he doesn’t follow the party line. He thinks for himself. And of course, I think that’s part of the reason he had troubles in the Presbyterian church is that he thought for himself he wasn’t going to follow the party line.

Camden Busey: Sure.

Barry Waugh: And you know, just like his vote against supporting the Prohibition Act, Volstead act, you know, in, in the presbytery, people thought, well, you know, being a Christian Presbyterian meant you were. You wanted to stop the booze flowing. Machen saw that as an infraction on a person’s right to make their own choices. I remember reading a letter he wrote complaining about putting the traffic signal up in Philadelphia because it restricted his freedom. This is a guy that, you know, thought for himself. Yeah, he would be very uncomfortable. Nowadays, you know, we have our politically correct divisions and he would find himself in the middle a lot, I think in some decisions.

Camden Busey: Now, whenever we think about Machen’s correspondence, I think we necessarily have to address his close relationship with his mother. Many of the letters written to his mother, there could be reasons for that. But how would you characterize Machen’s particular relationship with his mom?

Barry Waugh: Well, it’s important that at this point in his life. His father had died in 1915, so his mother’s a widow.

Camden Busey: And he was much older, at 20 some years older than Minnie, right?

Barry Waugh: Yes, he was an older man. She was there with two servants, Betty and William, that I know of. Family lived in Baltimore, but his brothers, I know, his older brother Arley or Arthur Webster, II think the second. Yeah, the second was married and had children. I’m not 100% sure his younger brother had children at this point, but they had families. Machen was, of course, single all his life, and I think he kind of took up the mantle, if you will, of keeping a particular eye on his mother as he could.

And in the comment in the early letters, before he goes to his first hut assignment at St. Mard, there’s a lot of talk about his learning French and his going to the French plays and his reading French literature and French poetry and these things and getting involved in the French culture. He complained considerably about what I would call, or has been called the ugly American who goes to France or Germany or Japan or wherever and expects everybody to be like Americans, speak English. And he thought that the Americans over there should make at least a few polite efforts to learn a little bit of French so that they could converse with the nationals.

And getting back to his mother, there are hints in the letters that his mother had an extensive, or at least a more extensive knowledge of French and French life than Machen did. And I think that in those early letters, when he’s talking a lot about French in France, he’s got a point of contact with his mom and something that she could really get into. As he told about the plays he attended and his efforts to learn French, he actually would go and eat meals with a widow, Madame Lalotte, a widow of a French pastor, and converse with her. These were all things that his mother could identify with and the family back home could get some sense of what he was trying to do and how he was involved with the French people. But he got really irritated with Americans because the general failure to, you know, they were there to do a job, kind of, and they’re going to be American while they’re there, and no effort to learn the language and to try to get along with the French people in their own language and their own culture. So I. And I say that because there was a brief online comment about the book that in the early part of the book, you would not know that there was a war going on. I think it’s true there were some hints here and there as he talked about having to walk in the dark and that kind of thing because you couldn’t have the lights on for the airplanes and that sort of thing. But I think he’s connecting with his mother and complaining about Americans. I remember. Go ahead.

Camden Busey: Oh, I just curious to ask how, if you’ve read any of his correspondence with his mother while he Was in Germany. And if there are any interesting similarities or differences between the two sets of letters.

Barry Waugh: No, that’s a good. That’s a good thought. I haven’t done that. I do know that the. Can’t think of his name. Professor down at Covenant College wrote an article on Machen’s correspondent.

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Barry Waugh: Bill Dennison was in Germany. Yes, that’s right. Thank you. And that was interesting to look at that.

Camden Busey: Now, other than his mother, were there any figures that were particularly influential on Machen at this time? Is he right about other people he worked with? Were there other family members he was writing to?

Barry Waugh: Well, I would say his friends at Princeton. Were Armstrong and Patton particularly close. And they are mentioned. I believe they’re both mentioned at some point in the letters. And you know, just by nature of the letters being written to his mother, the great. You know, 95% of the mentions about people are family.

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Barry Waugh: His sister in law, his nephews and nieces and his brother and, you know, that kind of thing. There was sort of extended comments about J. Ross Stevenson and a little bit of a. I guess a little bit of a tiff they got into while Machen was in France. And that’s. Machen actually asked his mother to snip the sentences out of the letter in which he had made some negative comments about Stevenson. And that portion is missing from the letter. So. Interesting. He had a great sense, you know, that his letters, not only these war letters, but his letters in general, may have some significance in the future. Some might call that a big ego.

Geoffrey Waddington: Yeah.

Camden Busey: Or maybe he was thinking even for family or nephews, nieces, maybe even future children he thought he might have had maybe that too.

Barry Waugh: Again, you know, the letters. The family enjoyed the letters. They wanted to publish them. And of course, because of the war, Machen was very strict about following the instruction he had received about how the letters were to be handled. So he discouraged that at that point in time. But it’s the letters home and his relationship to his mother. He was, I think, supporting her. Their indication from comments that he makes in the letters that she had a frail constitution about something. Not really quite clear what it was. She did go to a different area, I believe it was in the summer to get away because of her health problem. There was a mention of fumigating her room or her home because I guess if some thought that there might be some kind of organisms or molds or something that were bothering her, and I got the general idea that she needed support and encouragement. That was something that his father had done and of course, he was not there to do it anymore.

Camden Busey: Yeah. Now letter, you know, nowadays we just write so many emails, and I fear for historians of tomorrow in terms of their efforts, it’s going to be difficult tracking all this stuff down because it’s just kind of in the digital ether and in many ways gets lost. And so letter writing, even beyond the fact that we just write emails and we don’t write letters per se, there’s something lost in the fact that we don’t do this anymore.

And I wanted to ask you, what about this very important form of media letter writing? You know, what did this afford soldiers and their families as opposed to, you know, what we might do today with a quick telephone call or an email? What does a letter actually offer that other things don’t?

Barry Waugh: I think a letter is more personal, especially when they’re handwritten, as Machin’s were. You can, through the handwriting, you can get a sense of the stress or the busyness of the person who’s involved in writing the letter. Of course, you know, typewriters pretty much clean that up. Machen went to typing his letters when he was at home and used to typewriter letter, type letter, typewriter consent consistently. So you lose that sort of personal aspect, I think, with a typewriter.

Camden Busey: Oh, yeah.

Barry Waugh: And emails are now really typed letters that are not on paper, they’re stored with little bytes on some kind of memory device somewhere. But I thought about this a lot and I think that if a person has a sense of what can be done with email, actually email may be better than letters. I know people will hate hearing that, special seminarians and historians, but, you know, an email has a time and dates. It always has the person’s name on there. I don’t know how many letters I’ve been frustrated with over the years. Not in the case of summations letters in the book, but other writers who just forgot to date their letters. And I’m dying to know, when did he write this letter? Well, email, you know, when it was written.

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Barry Waugh: And if a person is conscious that emails might be used in the future for historical purposes, I think it’s a great opportunity. Has to remember to keep them on a memory device so people can access them for the future. I mean, you would actually have the ability, if there’s any value in it, to reconstruct a person’s day based on the time and date in the email. Might be kind of spooky, actually.

Camden Busey: Well, it might already be happening without us knowing about it.

Barry Waugh: I know that you guys know some People’s emails look like they typed them with their feet. And other people found other people’s emails are composed just like they would compose a letter, you know, and that’s the way it should be. It’s the tyranny of the urgent. You know, I got to get this answer to so and so and so I just whip it out and I don’t worry about upper and lower case and punctuation. And my wife teaches middle school language arts and students, you know, if I text in lowercase and don’t punctuate, it doesn’t matter. Why does it matter when I sit down and write a paper for Mrs. Waugh? You know, it’s a matter of what you do with it. I think email has a potential to be wonderful resource for historians, but if the person writing the email doesn’t care, then maybe it’s not such a good resource. Email is personal. You can write them to mom, you can write them to the kids, you can do whatever you want to with them and, and make the most of them.

Camden Busey: I just suppose it does come down to how they’re stored and what access a historian might have to something. At least with a letter, if somebody puts it in a file cabinet or just keeps it in a pile of papers, that could be discovered. But if it’s on somebody’s computer that eventually gets recycled or thrown out or erased, it seems a little more volatile, oddly enough then than paper for historical purposes.

Geoffrey Waddington: Some folks do of course, print out their email. I’m one of those in between guys where if it’s an important email, if it’s important, I’ll print it out. But you’re right, electronically you do. Well, every man made thing has the potential of being destroyed, right? Whether it’s electronic or whether it’s paper.

Camden Busey: Now you mentioned Machen was conscious of the fact that these letters might be read down the road and he was interested in keeping them working. What type of system did he have or what type of way did he encourage his mother to store his letters?

Barry Waugh: I’m not sure about the mother aspect, but I do know that Grace Mullen has kept Machen’s letters as Machen stored them himself. Now, I believe that the files basically are chronological and that it’s sometimes like if he happened to write a particular bunch of correspondence with someone, those might be in a dedicated file. So I believe there’s about 30 linear feet of archival boxes at Westminster with Machen’s letters and of course other things in there, Christmas cards and that sort of thing. Yeah, he stored them Himself.

So that there’s one letter in the collection that had a lot of footnotes in the book. And that was because he had gone back when he got home and wrote out the geographical locations.

Camden Busey: Oh, yeah.

Barry Waugh: Because he could not put those in the letter due to censorship. Because, of course, you don’t want the enemy to find out information about where you are and that kind of thing. And when he wrote those in, it was to help his family, you know, where he was and so forth. But I think also it was for posterity. It was for me. You know, anybody that reads a book that they are able to know where he was. And that’s part of the reason I wanted the maps in there. Is to give people a real sense of space. And that he was really. And particular locations and that sort of thing.

Camden Busey: Now, if he wrote a. Forgive me. If there’s some obvious explanation to this. Seeing that he wrote just on regular paper most of the time with a fountain pen. If he sent his mother a letter, did he just retrieve it later, after she passed, or later and put it in his own files? How did he get those letters back if there weren’t duplicates up front?

Barry Waugh: I guess it got him back either when he came back home or, as you mentioned, when she died. I really don’t know. That’s. I think it’s a question Grace would have to answer. Because she would know how the collection at the seminary actually came together.

Camden Busey: I know when the Van Till. That’s interesting. I know in the Van Till archives when he was writing. When Van Til was writing official letters. His secretary would just type on carbon paper. So there’d be an automatic duplicate that would get filed. Or the original would be sent off to whomever it was sent off to. But in this case, just a handwritten letter. I’ve always been curious of where these come from. And that might actually shape, historically, our view of Machen. Because the letters we’re reading are the ones that are available to us. Who knows whom he might have written letters to that never got returned to him or put back in his file? There could be stacks of them somewhere. Anyway, it’s fascinating to talk about these interests and whatnot. But I think I want to turn a little bit, just in our remaining time. To maybe some intellectual influence or theological influence. You already mentioned part of the language and his desire to at least be able to speak a little bit. But did French culture in general have any influence on Machen. Or was he fairly isolated from the French particulars being on the front?

Barry Waugh: He was definitely interested in all things French, he really saturated himself until he received his first assignment at the YMCA hut in St. Mard. He was studying the French language and reading French literature and attending plays performed by French speakers. He would actually take the French text of a play and read it before he went to see the play. And then he would go to the play and hope that his previous reading would help him to get through the dialogue that was taking place. He did comment that French poetry was just. It was just a mystery to him. He was having great difficulty with that.

I mentioned he sought out a lady to eat with so he could converse with her. She was a widow of a pastor, Protestant pastor there in Paris. And he wanted to see her country through her eyes. And it’s kind of interesting. I think that given Machen’s interest in New Testament and grammatical historical exegesis, I think that he really wanted to understand the language, history and culture of the French in a way that he would want to understand the language, history and culture of New Testament times. It was. It’s the saturation method. You know, you learn an awful lot.

One thing I do is I. To the aggravation of my daughter and to the patience of my wonderful wife. I go around and I look up graves of Presbyterians of the past.

Camden Busey: Yeah.

Barry Waugh: And, you know, sometimes you can tell a lot from a grave. I know one person I studied, he left specific instructions in his will that he wanted a modest, small grave marker. And when I located his grave, it had this, I would say, about a 15 foot tall obelisk.

Camden Busey: Wow.

Barry Waugh: With all this text on it and all this stuff. That his family had decided to ignore his specific wishes because he was a modest person and honor him with this large grave marker. But, you know, the idea is, I think if you really study somebody, you want to know everything about them. I remember talking to Shawn Lucas when he was studying Dabney. He had made great efforts to go to the different sites that Dabney had been associated with. He wanted to get a sense of what Dabney was talking about. I think it was when Dabney was standing on the campus of Davidson University. I believe at that point Dabney was almost totally blind. And if I remember correctly, Sean went and stood on the campus of Davidson. The main campus has not changed over the years. The horseshoe area or the square or whatever. And I think that’s important. And Nachen went to France. He says, hey, I’m going to be French. You know, I’m not only going to be a minister of the gospel and I’M not only going to stew and brew hot chocolate, but, you know, I’m going to take advantage of this situation and I’m going to enjoy the French and I’m going to fuss about the Americans that, you know, don’t want to get involved and learn about the French. And, you know, he’s a scholar and he even studied New Testament French scholarship. And his general assessment was there wasn’t much there, but he did study it.

Geoffrey Waddington: Barry, almost anybody that would go through that kind of experience of being near the front lines of a major war is going to be affected by that experience. With regard to Machen, are there any lasting effects upon him spiritually, experientially and theologically that you’re aware of?

Barry Waugh: Well, I think Stonehouse mentions that the war affected Machen. Darrell talks about it in his book Defending the Faith. And there’s no doubt that he was affected by the war. My perception is that even though he was a man in his mid-30s when he went to France, now you remember here a lot of these guys that were going over from the States were guys out of high school, young people and typically young people will either have a sort of gung ho, let’s go get the glory type thing or be absolutely terrified or somewhere in between there. And I think to some degree, Machen had that let’s beat the Germans and their allies and make it safe for the French people and the other people who were being oppressed by the Germans and others at the time.

And I think I mentioned, you know, he had a privileged life, maybe he was a little bit naive about what he was going to run into in the war, but he had his cage rattled just like everybody else did, you know, when he saw what it was, you know, this isn’t like reading Thucydides or whatever and war an awful thing. I think when he responded that he was going to be a fighter for peace once the war was over, it showed that he had been shaken by the war. And I think also it made him more jealous for the gospel. At his closest time to the front, I believe he was less than three miles. His hut was less than three miles from the trenches. People were dying, you know, within the view of the curvature of the earth.

And it made him all the more concerned for the supernatural gospel, for the gospel that saves people from sin and death, and guys were dying all around him. I think he grew a lot through the war. I wrote an article about Machen’s relationship with an alcoholic friend of his, Richard Hodges, and during that friendship, he went overseas in the war and his attitude about Richard changed when he came back. Richard had sort of been a real friend, but sort of, I would say, a spiritual project, sort of a diagonal project with Machen. That’s my impression. I could be wrong, but he was, you know, somebody he was helping because he felt like he should do it. He had the means and the interest to do it. When he came back from the war, he was saying, you know, this is a guy that’s been given to me by God’s providence to help out. So, yes, he changed. It affected him theologically in that he became more concerned for the gospel and the dying and helped him, I think, through those hard years he was about to face as he got into the controversies at Princeton Seminary and within the Presbyterian Church. And maybe it sort of helped him sharpen his bayonet and clean his rifle as he was going to face some really tough times of spiritual kind of play.

Camden Busey: Oh, yeah, it’s fascinating to hear about and to study and to get a window into the life or a very important time in the life of one of American Presbyterianism’s biggest figures. Jeff, we have any other follow up or final questions before we say goodbye to Barry?

Geoffrey Waddington: I was trying to think. No, I mean, there’s so much that’s of interest here, of course, of what benefit, you know, what can we take away from the experience of Machen on the battlefront front lines of a major war? And maybe this is covered in some of the letters, but there clearly was Richard Gamble, not the theologian Richard Gamble, but the historian Richard Gamble has written a book on the World War I and America’s entry into it. And frankly, from my perspective, what might have been the blurring of the distinction between America and the church? Is there any sense in the letters, Barry, that Machen was concerned about that equation? In other words, The benefits to America are equated with the if America does well, that means the church is doing well. Is that a concern of his at all in the letters?

Barry Waugh: I didn’t see anything about that at all. But that’s the kind of thing I would think Machen would have found repugnant. And even if it was a common feeling among Americans of the time, I don’t know that he would have talked about it unless he’d been directly confronted with it. I think of his hatred for the term religious work with respect to the ymca. He wanted to get into the religious work and away from hot chocolate and selling cigarettes or whatever else and be involved in helping the soldiers spiritually. But he Hated religious work because he doesn’t say this, but I would assume because it takes the gospel and makes it just one religion among religions, when in fact it’s not a religion. It is the gospel of God’s grace. It’s. It’s not a works religion. It is a total grace religion. Right. And I’m using the word religion and I don’t even like it. He was concerned for the uniqueness of the gospel. And, you know, he was not a religious worker. He was a gospel worker. He was a gospel minister, a Presbyterian minister, and he was concerned for that. I think he had a good sense of the distinction between church and state. We can even go into the southern factor here with the spirituality of the church. Right. And he would. Even though I don’t remember anything in the letters about what you’re talking about, Jeff, he would not have thought too much of that type of a thinking.

Geoffrey Waddington: Well, it’s. It would be like, you know, in the Civil.

Barry Waugh: He.

Geoffrey Waddington: He reacted straight, did he not, to the singing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic in church services?

Barry Waugh: Yeah, he didn’t like that.

Geoffrey Waddington: It would have been that writ large, America entering World War I. And I can imagine that Dr. Machen would have had a real hard time with that and that would have been pushed into his face going over and serving in the ymca.

Camden Busey: You know, a lot of examples of Machen’s views on the relationship of the church in the state. And he was opposed to the teaching of the Bible in public schools, for instance. Things like that just indicate that he did think for himself. But he also was zealous for the gospel, but also in the context of a reformed ecclesiology.

Barry Waugh: Yeah, but, you know, things have changed a lot since 1918.

Camden Busey: Oh, and then there, of course, was a. Another war.

Geoffrey Waddington: Yeah.

Camden Busey: After Machen had passed, of course. But my, what a significant influence this was. The Great War. They don’t call it that for. Because just on accident, but indeed it shaped many people. I appreciated Carl Truman’s blurb on the back of this book. J. Gresson Machen is a fascinating, complex and controversial figure. What is often forgotten is that he was also a member of the generation of young men whose lives were forever changed by their exposure to the horrors of trench warfare in the First World War. We want to thank you for bringing this to us, Dr. Waugh. This book is a valuable resource for people interested in the life of Machen, but also people wanting to grasp. Just get a handle on this time period. It’s a very important effort that you’ve done And I want to thank you for first, for transcribing and editing this volume, but also secondly for coming on the program today to discuss it.

Barry Waugh: Well, I just wanted to say I’m grateful to the seminary and PNR for publishing the book. It was a long road and I think the finished product is attractive.

Camden Busey: Oh, yes.

Barry Waugh: Has 95% of the things in it I wanted. And I don’t think I’m unique with authors and that, you know, things aren’t always 100%. It’s about as close to 100% as I think it could have gotten. And thank you all for interviewing me.

Camden Busey: Oh, yeah.

Barry Waugh: And I enjoy talking about it because nobody has asked me about to talk about it for you guys. And I do have another opportunity in the future.

Camden Busey: Great.

Barry Waugh: Which I’ll be talking about the book again.

Camden Busey: Great. Well, I’m glad to introduce this volume to the listeners and we want to mention to everybody again, check this out. You can get it@wtsbooks.com it’s also available in other places, but Letters from the J. Gresham Machen’s Correspondence from World War I, a co publication from Westminster Seminary Press and Presbyterian and Reformed Publishers. It’s available now. You can get it for a reasonable price, pick it up and read it today. I do want to point people back to the website. You can visit us online@reformedforum.org there you’ll find information about all of our programs. We also have a new reading list that we just published and it’s in process. So as we receive feedback and continue to discuss things with one another, we’ll add some books, ready, move some others, maybe move some things around. But you can find that under the resources menu on our website reformedforum.org resources readinglist. And of course, if you want to get a hold of us, you can tweet us eformedforum or email us@mailreformedforum.org, and if you want to be like Machen, you can write us a letter and a fountain pen. Address it to P.O. box 27422, Philadelphia, PA 19118. I want to thank everybody for listening and we hope you join us again next time on Christ the Center.