Focus on the Family Citizen March 2009 : Page 10
Christian Statesman Series: John Witherspoon Danger and reward Princeton’s earliest leaders died young, but one from Scotland lived long enough to see his graduates shine. Part 2 of a series on American statesmen whose lives offer hope to people of faith. by Alan R. Crippen II S erving as president of Princeton University in its very early days, when it was known as the College of New Jersey and stood in the middle of fertile farmlands, proved hazardous to a number of learned men. The premature death in 1766 of the 51-year-old Rev. Dr. Samuel Finley, coupled with the premature deaths of each of his predecessors, presented an institutional crisis that threatened the very existence of the college. Chartered in 1746 by the British Colony of New Jersey to educate and develop young leaders for ad- vancing the religious and cultural transformation begun by the Great Awakening, the college had al- ready produced by the time of Finley’s death a small cluster of great and eminent men: the Rev. James Manning (graduated in 1762), the founder and first president of Brown University; David Ramsey 10 AP IMAGES TEACHER EXTRAORDINAIRE On the campus of Princeton University in New Jersey stands a statue of Dr. John Witherspoon, who educated a president and three Supreme Court justices. (1765), physician and historian of the American Revolution; and Oliver Ellsworth (1766), the third Chief Justice of the United States—an impressive accomplishment for a small and modest evangelical college. For its next president, the college’s board of trust- ees looked across the Atlantic. Its choice was the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon (1723-1794), pastor- theologian of the Laigh Kirk in Paisley, Scotland. Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Wither- spoon quickly gained prominence as a national fig- ure in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He led the “Popular party,” an evangelical movement in the national church that forcefully and effectively de- fended the Westminster Confession of Faith—the Reformation creed of biblically orthodox Presbyte- rians—against the claims of so-called “Moderates.” Witherspoon’s most famous works—Ecclesiasti- cal Characteristics (1753) and Justification (1757)— Citizen
Christian Statesman Series: John Witherspoon
Alan R. Crippen II
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