Aubert, Suzanne, Founder of the Daughters of Our Lady of
Compassion, born St-Symphorien, Lyon, France 19 June 1835, died Wellington, New
Zealand 1 October 1926. Determined to be a nursing nun, she trained in Paris,
nursed during the Crimean War, and joined Bishop Pompallier in New Zealand in
1860. She worked with Maori girls in Auckland and in 1871 moved to Napier where
she nursed, developed herbal remedies, catechized, and edited a Maori Prayer
Book (1879). From 1883 she developed a remote congregation at Jerusalem on
the Wanganui River where she broke in a farm, ran a dispensary, gathered babies
and children, published A Manual of Maori Conversation (1885) and
founded The Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion (1892). Moving to Wellington in
1899 she set up the Home of Compassion and went to Rome (1913-1920) to gain
papal recognition for her Order and its mission.
Jessie Munro, The story of Suzanne Aubert, Auckland University Press,
1996. A H McLintock, ed., An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, Government
Printer, 1966.
Machen,
John Gresham, Orthodox Presbyterian leader, born Baltimore,
USA, 28 July 1881, died Bismark, North Dakota, 1 January 1937. He was educated
at John Hopkins and Princeton and traveled in Europe before teaching New
Testament at Princeton (1906-1929). He was ordained by the New Brunswick
Presbytery, June 1914 and took a strong reformed stand in the
fundamentalist-modernist controversy. His Christianity and Liberalism
(1923) remains in print. He helped lay the basis for Westminster Theological
Seminary founded in Philadelphia in 1930 and in 1935 was expelled from the
PCUSA for his leadership of the Independent Board of Foreign Missions. It was
widely recognized that the PCUSA had overreacted, but many left to form the
Presbyterian Church of America, later the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Machen
was a careful scholar remembered also for his political libertarianism.
DCA
Mather,
Cotton, New England Puritan and theologian, born Boston,
Massachusetts Bay Colony, 12 February 1663, died 13 February 1728, Boston. The
son of Increase Mather, he entered Harvard at 12 and gained his MA at 18. He
was ordained in 1685 as a colleague to his father and remained a pastor at the
Second Church Boston throughout his life. He published 469 works, including a
church history of America Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), and a
handbook for ministerial graduates on doing good, love affairs, poetry and
style, Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726). He defended ministerial
leadership in society, despite the social changes which made that difficult,
and anticipated later patterns of evangelical activism. He believed in the
existence of witchcraft, though he sought to moderate claims of evidence. He
was interested in science and medicine and was a strong supporter of smallpox
inoculation.
DCA, EB
Mather,
Increase, Puritan leader, born Dorchester, Massachusetts
Bay Colony, 21 June 1639, died Boston, Massachusetts, 23 August, 1723. He
entered Harvard at 12 and graduated at 17. He studied at Trinity College
Dublin, was ordained teaching pastor of the Second Church Boston (1664-1723),
and became president of Harvard (1685-1701). A defender of the old
Congregational way, he was supported by his son Cotton who was his colleague
for 40 years. In 1688 he was sent to England to thank James II for his
declaration of liberty for all faiths and remained long enough to secure the
removal of the governor of Massachusetts. Mather’s support for the new governor
and the charter of 1691 proved unpopular. He was blamed for contributing to the
Salem witch trials of 1692, though his cautions about spiritual evidence had been
ignored.
DCA, EB
Maurice, Frederick Denison, Anglican
theologian and Christian socialist, born Normanstone, near Lowestoft, Suffolk,
England, 29 August 1805, died London, 1 April 1872. The son of a Unitarian
minister and brought up in a home full of religious disputation, he studied at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and Exeter College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1834
to the curacy of Bobbenhall, Warwickshire and became chaplain of Guy’s
Hospital, London, in 1836 where he lectured on moral philosophy and wrote The
Kingdom of Christ (1838). In 1840 he was elected professor of English at
King’s College, London and in 1846 became professor of theology. With J M F
Ludlow and C Kingsley he helped form the Christian Socialist movement. His
rejection of the endlessness of hell punishments focused opposition to his
theology and led to his dismissal from King’s College in 1853. He started a
Working Men’s College in 1854 and was professor of moral philosophy at
Cambridge from 1866 until his death.
EB, ODCC
McGavran, Donald Anderson, Founder of the
church growth movement, born Damoh, India, 15 December 1897, died 10 July 1990.
He graduated from Butler University, Yale Divinity School and Columbia
University (PhD) and served as a Disciples of Christ missionary in India (1923-1954).
Stimulated by the work of Wascom Pickett, he sought to discover the
“reproducible principles” contributing to church growth. In 1961 he established
the Institute of Church Growth in Eugene, Oregon, and in 1965 became founding
dean of the School of World Mission and Institute of Church Growth at Fuller
Theological Seminary. He had the knack of asking uncomfortable questions, was
taken seriously by ecumenical and other critics, and challenged the
individualism of the evangelical tradition. If he found it hard to provide
answers to some more penetrating theological concerns, he remains significant
for his questions, and the inspiration of his commitment that God’s lost people
should be found.
BDCM, ML
Melville,
Andrew, Scottish Presbyterian leader, born Baldovie,
Angus, Scotland, 1 August 1545, died Sedan, France, 1622. Educated at St
Andrews University he went to France, studied at Poitier and then under Beza in
Geneva. He returned to Scotland in 1574 and was appointed principal at Glasgow
University. He was moderator of the General Assembly in 1578, 1582 (twice),
1587 and 1594. Taking the mantle of Scottish church leadership after the death
of John Knox in 1572, he worked to establish presbyterianism and oppose state
interference, and the Second Book of Discipline (1578) was largely his
work. He was accused of treason in 1584 but became rector at St Andrews
(1590-1597) until again in conflict with the King. The English Privy Council
confined him to the Tower of London (1607-1611) before he was allowed to go to
exile in France where he taught biblical theology at Sedan.
DSCHT, EB.
Moody, Dwight Lyman,
Evangelist, born East Northfield, Massachusetts, 5 February 1837, died
Northfield, Massachusetts, 22 December 1899. He was converted in Boston and
moved to Chicago in 1856 becoming a successful shoe salesman. A Sunday School
he started in the slums in 1858 became a church in 1863. He worked under the
YMCA, organized Sunday School Teacher’s conventions, and visited England in
1867. A preaching tour (1872-1875) to Britain accompanied by the singer, Ira D
Sankey brought an enthusiastic response, as did their Sankey and Moody Hymn
Book (1873). After similar missions in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York and
Boston, Moody founded the Northfield Seminary for Young Women in 1879 and the
Mount Hermon School for Young Men in 1881. A second tour to Britain (1881-1884)
included universities. In 1889 he helped found what became the Moody Bible
Institute.
ODCC
Mott, John Raleigh, American
Methodist layman, student leader and international ecumenical statesman, born
Livingston Manor, New York State, 25 May 1865, died Orlando, Florida, 31
January 1955. He attended Upper Iowa University and Cornell University where he
was converted. Influenced by D. L. Moody, he championed the Student Volunteer
Movement’s call for “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” His
gifts of leadership were demonstrated in the YMCA (intercollegiate secretary
1888-1915, general secretary 1915-1931) and the founding of the World Student
Christian Fellowship (general secretary 1895-1920). A key organizer and the
chair of the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, he was a central
figure in the International Missionary Council (chair, 1928-1946) and the
groups which formed the World Council of Churches (1948). He shared the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1946 and is buried in Washington Cathedral.
BDCM, ML
Newbigin, James Edward Lesslie, Bishop, missionary, ecumenist, theologian, born
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 8 December 1909, died London, 30 January 1998. He was
educated at Cambridge, a Student Christian Movement traveling secretary and
ordained by the Church of Scotland to be a missionary in India (1936). He
served as village evangelist (1936-1947), Church of South India Bishop in
Madura and Ramnad (1947-1959), secretary of the International Missionary
Council (1959-1961), WCC associate general secretary (1961-1965), Bishop in
Madras (1965-1974), professor of ecumenics and mission, Selly Oak Colleges
(1974-1979), and minister, Winson Green United Reformed Church (1980-1988). He
received a CBE in 1974 and was moderator of the United Reformed Church
(1978-1979). His publications including The Other Side of 1984, (1983), Foolishness
to the Greeks, (1986), and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989)
were a major contribution to the “Gospel and Culture” movement. His
autobiography, Unfinished Agenda, was published in 1985 and 1995.
BDCM, DEM
BDCM: Gerald H. Anderson, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. New York: Simon
& Schuster Macmillan, 1998.
DAC: John Chew,
David Wu and Scott Sunquist, eds., Dictionary
of Asian Christianity, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans (forthcoming).
DCA, Dictionary
of Christianity in America.
DEB: Donald M.
Lewis, ed. The Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography 1730-1860.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
DEM: Nicholas Lossky, et al, eds. Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Geneva: WCC, 1991.
DSCHT: Nigel M. de
S. Cameron, ed. Dictionary of Scottish
Church History and Theology. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993.
EB: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1999.
IBMR: International Bulletin of Missionary Research
ML: Gerald H. Anderson, et al, eds. Mission Legacies. Biographical Studies of Leaders of the
Modern Missionary Movement, Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994.
ODCC: F. L. Cross
and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,
Oxford, 1997.