Gresham Machen, founder of the OPC, hero to many in Reformed circles. Gresham Machen is often depicted as an exemplary leader with an unwavering opposition to liberal Christianity.

“Machen’s racist comments are not private sins but public sins and represent a racist agenda he actively pursued at Princeton seminary. According to Machen’s letter, he actively opposed the integration of a “colored man” to Princeton seminary, and refused “table-companionship” with himself and others at Princeton.

Machen expressed “it always makes me intensely angry to hear people talking glibly about equal civil rights of negreos, which in the South would mean that every legislator and every judge would be a savage”.

Clearly, this is an example of a man who allowed his cultural views -namely, his socially inflated status as a White male- to redefine, reshape, and even undo core tenets of the Christian faith. “