Charles Curtis McIntire Jr. (May 17, 1906 – March 19, 2002), known as Carl McIntire,McIntire's baptismal name was Charles Curtis McIntire, Jr., but he was called Carl from earliest childhood. Collection Guide, Carl McIntire Papers, Princeton Theological Seminary . was a founder and minister in the Bible Presbyterian Church, founder and long-time president of the International Council of Christian Churches and the American Council of Christian Churches, and a popular religious radio broadcaster, who proudly identified himself as a fundamentalist.Many sources for this article may be found at CarlMcIntire.org .
Youth and education Born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Carl McIntire was the oldest of four children born to Charles Curtis McIntire, a Presbyterian minister and M.A. graduate of Princeton University, and Hettie Hotchkin McIntire. McIntire's father pastored in Salt Lake City, but by 1912 he had suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized. He and his wife were divorced, and she raised the children alone in Durant, Oklahoma,PCA Historical Center website . McIntire's maternal grandmother and paternal great-grandmother had been Presbyterian missionaries to the Choctaw Nation. Marianna McIntire Clark, "Ancestry and Early Life of Carl McIntire" in The McIntire Memorial (Seoul, Korea: Truth & Freedom Publishing Company, 2005), 34-35. where she served as Dean of Women at Southeastern State Teachers College.PCA Historical Center website . By 1920, Charles Curtis McIntire had recovered and was serving as the pastor of the Presbyterian church of Vinita, Oklahoma, as a lecturer, and as a prison evangelist. He died in 1929. Carl McIntire completed high school in Durant and attended Southeastern State, where he became an award-winning intercollegiate debater and president of the student body during his final year. For his senior year, he transferred to Park College, Parkville, Missouri, where he received his B.A. degree before entering Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, in 1928 to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry.Hotchkin Genealogy ; there is considerable (though ill-organized) biographical information and 75 pages of photographs in K. C. Quek, ed., The McIntire Memorial: Carl McIntire, 1906-2002 (Singapore: ICCC, 2005). Meanwhile, he worked as a janitor and sold maps to farmers door-to-door in Caddo County, Oklahoma.[Carl McIntire], "Who Is Carl McIntire?" booklet published by the 20th Century Reformation Hour , 2.
During the late 1920s, Princeton Seminary was embroiled in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy that had disquieted the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America as well as other Protestant denominations. McIntire became a strong supporter of J. Gresham Machen, a conservative professor of New Testament. With Machen, McIntire opposed a reorganization of the seminary in 1929 that appeared to strengthen liberal elements in the church. He followed his mentor and three other professors from Princeton to the newly founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he completed his Th.B. degree in 1931.Margaret G. Harden, comp.,A Brief History of the Bible Presbyterian Church and Its Agencies (privately published, 1966). McIntire said that Machen's book What Is Faith? influenced him "as much as any book." [Carl McIntire], "Who Is Carl McIntire?" booklet published by the 20th Century Reformation Hour , 2.
In May 1931, he married Fairy Eunice Davis of Paris, Texas, whom he had met when they were both students at Southeastern,McIntire called Fairy David McIntire (December 23, 1906 – September 13, 1992), a "person of unusual ability and charm [who] stood beside him through all the trials." [Carl McIntire], "Who Is Carl McIntire?" booklet published by the 20th Century Reformation Hour , 2. and who became a high school English teacher while he completed seminary. They had three children.Marianna Hotchkin McIntire, a school principal and teacher of English literature, Latin, and Spanish (b. 1932), Sally Celeste McIntire, a homemaker and real estate broker (b. 1936), and Carl Thomas [C. T.] McIntire, a historian at the University of Toronto (b. 1939). (Hotchkin Genealogy ) After the death of Fairy Davis McIntire in 1992, McIntire married Alice Goff, a church office administrator with whom he had worked for many years.The McIntire Memorial, 53.
Founding of the Bible Presbyterian Church
In 1931, McIntire was ordained into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church USA, serving for two years at Chelsea Presbyterian Church, Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1933, he was called to the Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, the largest church in the West Jersey Presbytery. McIntire remained a resident of Collingswood for the rest of his life.obituary, The New York Times March 22, 2002. "His daughter Marianna Clark said he had lived in the same house in Collingswood, N.J., since 1939." The Women's Missionary Society of the Collingswood church called his attention to what they perceived as a modernist perspective in the missions study book, which had been promoted by the denomination's Board of Foreign Missions.[Carl McIntire], "Who Is Carl McIntire?" booklet published by the 20th Century Reformation Hour , 3. McIntire joined the conservative side in the ongoing Fundamentalist-Modernist debate, and in 1934, at Machen's invitation, he became a founding member of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, an agency organized as an alternative to the denominational mission board that supported theologically liberal missionaries. Deeming the new board a challenge to its authority, the General Assembly demanded that the clergymen resign. After they refused, Machen, McIntire, and seven other clergymen were tried by an ecclesiastical court in 1935–36.Ethel Rink, 40 Years...Carl McIntire and the Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, 1933-1973 (Collingswood, N.J.: Christian Beacon Press, 1973),8-10. The board members lost, and they renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church, as did the Collingswood Presbyterian Church, only a tiny minority of whose members refused to support their young pastor.Margaret G. Harden, comp.,A Brief History of the Bible Presbyterian Church and Its Agencies(privately published, ); see also A brief history of the Independent Board from the IBPFM website
In 1936 McIntire joined Machen and others to found the Presbyterian Church of America, later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The new church attracted supporters from other Reformed traditions, complicating the church's effort to define itself. A debate soon emerged in the young denomination over eschatology, Presbyterian traditions, the use of alcohol and tobacco, and the place of political activity in the church. McIntire and others left in 1937 to form the Bible Presbyterian Church, which emphasized Fundamentalist distinctives in contrast to continental Reformed positions, supporting political involvement, the Scofield Reference Bible, a premillennialist view of eschatology, and abstinence from the use of tobacco and alcohol.[Carl McIntire], "Who Is Carl McIntire?" booklet published by the 20th Century Reformation Hour , 3; D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 163, 165, 166.
In April 1938, after the Collingswood church lost a civil suit over control of its church property, the congregation walked out en masse from their impressive Gothic building and followed McIntire to a huge tent erected several blocks east on the main street at Haddon Avenue and Cuthbert Boulevard.Following the withdrawal, the denomination then deposed McIntire, allowing his enemies to brand him a "defrocked Presbyterian minister." [Carl McIntire], "Who Is Carl McIntire?" booklet published by the 20th Century Reformation Hour , 3. In May 1938, the congregation moved into a wooden "Tabernacle," and in November 1957, into a neo-colonial church building with a tall, Wren steeple. The church seated more than a thousand. A Sunday School was constructed on the location of the previous tent, and the revamped Tabernacle became an activity center.The Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood: for the Glory of God (Collingswood BPC, 1957); Ethel Rink, 40 Years...Carl McIntire and the Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, 1933-1973 (Collingswood, N.J.: Christian Beacon Press, 1973),24-26. See also Margaret G. Harden, comp., A Brief History of the Bible Presbyterian Church and Its Agencies, (privately published, ). The Sunday School building was also used for Faith Christian School.
Expanding ministry
Christian Beacon
In February 1936, during the series of ecclesiastical trials, McIntire launched a weekly newspaper, The Christian Beacon to give greater voice to his message. The Collingswood church had already printed many of his sermons, and its church services had been broadcast over the radio in the Philadelphia region. Over the next four decades, McIntire published twelve books, and hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, sermons, speeches, and documentary portfolios.Ethel Rink served as the editor of virtually all his major publications, and Ruth Trato assisted with the documentary supplements. After the death of Rink, McIntire's published prose noticeably deteriorated. As Joel Carpenter has written, McIntire was "a gifted publicist," and his Christian Beacon was a "widely read organ of separatist opinion in which McIntire practiced his talent for sensational and aggressive religious journalism."Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 205.
Twentieth-Century Reformation Hour In March 1955, McIntire initiated a daily thirty-minute radio program, The Twentieth Century Reformation Hour, which featured McIntire's commentary on religious and political affairs.Ethel Rink, 40 Years, 24. The radio program generally began with a homily from the Bible, followed by a monologue by McIntire on a wide range of subjects, including apostasy in mainline churches, liberalism in government, opposition to coexistence with communism, and cultural issues of the moment, including gambling, sex education, socialized medicine, and fluoridation of drinking water. An associate pastor of the Collingswood church, Charles Richter, known to listeners as "Amen Charlie," regularly "amened" his support of McIntire's statements."Amen Charlie was Carl McIntire's radio sidekick when I frequently tuned in to the program during the 1960s and '70s. Charlie was a man of very few words. His main role was to provide a brief change of pace in the midst of his boss's monologues. McIntire would go on for a few minutes on favorite topic, and then he would pause and ask, 'Isn't that right, Charlie?' And Amen Charlie would reply, 'Amen. You're right, Dr. McIntire!'" Richard J. Mouw, "You're Right, Dr. McIntire," Christianity Today, May 17, 2002. During the 1960s, the program may have been heard on as many as 600 radio stations—although McIntire's inaccuracy with numbers became legendary.D.A. Waite, Carl McIntire's $200,000 Tax Debt in Cape May, Etc., (Collingswood, N.J.: The Bible for Today, 1974). Waite was a disaffected former employee who counted 414 stations in April 1965. By the early 1970s, Waite said that McIntire was broadcasting on "well under 100 stations." (8). In 1965, McIntire effectively purchased radio station, WXUR, Media, Pennsylvania, although it was formally owned by Faith Theological Seminary.Ethel Rink, 40 Years, 39.
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