George Angier Gordon

1853-1929. Congregational minister and writer. Scottish-born, he graduated from Bangor Theological Seminary and Harvard University, proving himself a brilliant student of philosophy. A preacher of great power, during a long and influential pastorate at the Old South Church in Boston (1884-1927), and through numerous books, and lectures in all the leading American universities, he was a leader in introducing liberalism into Congregationalism. He called Calvinism “the ultimate blasphemy of thought” and held that moral progress was the key to history. He nevertheless, with other liberals, rejected the contemporary drift toward a merely human view of Jesus. His works include Ultimate Conceptions of Faith (1903), Religion and Miracle (1909), Through Man to God (1906), and Aspects of the Infinite Mystery (1916).