Arthur C. McGiffert

The long career of Arthur Cushman McGiffert as exponent of church history and religious thought had its part in reconciling the precepts of theology with the course of historical research and the progress of modern science. His knowledge and understanding of religious history were extraordinarily complete; a review of his teachings by his colleagues at Union Seminary described Dr. McGiffert as “projecting himself into the minds” of religious thinkers in the past, of speaking “as though he were himself contemporary with the age which he was interpreting.” That he was “for many generations the outstanding lecturer of the faculty” was testified unanimously; his numerous published writings, distinguished as they were by clarity of thought and exactness of knowledge, extended his illumination of the past to the sphere of the reading public. It was no small task to enlarge public understanding of the career and character of so familiar a historical figure as Martin Luther; yet this was by general agreement of the critics achieved in McGiffert’s book on the leader of the Reformation.

Personally, Dr. McGiffert was a companionable fellow-member; somewhat reserved on first acquaintance, but soon enlivening the talk with shrewd and apt remarks on any controverted topic, not without occasional infusion of his own quiet Scotch humor. At the Century he was a frequent visitor, repeatedly selected for the Admissions committee and the Board of Management. He was not by choice a controversialist, but his forthright expression of opinion, regarding certain hard-and-fast dogmas of the church, brought him inevitably into collision with theological bitter-enders of the Nineties. Passages from McGiffert’s “History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age” were pronounced anathema by the orthodox General Johnsons of that day, and the censors, fresh from their pursuit of Dr. [Charles A.] Briggs, promptly brought charges of heresy against McGiffert. The doctor, however, not being of combative or publicity-seeking temperament, quietly withdrew from the Presbyterian ministry and entered the more liberal atmosphere of another fellowship.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1934 Century Association Yearbook