In light of the highly esteemed J. Gresham Machen biographies by Ned Stonehouse and Darryl Hart, one might reasonably wonder if a new Machen biography offers something substantively new. Well, Richard Burnett’s Machen’s hope certainly does. It is a biography, but it is not all-encompassing. Burnett’s aim is much narrower, though the book’s length might suggest otherwise. As he explains in the introduction, ‘What makes this biography different from others is that it focuses more on Machen’s first forty years, 1881–1921, rather than his last fifteen years’ (p. 3). Burnett pays particular attention to Machen’s ‘crisis of faith’, a matter that prior biographers have relegated to the periphery of their studies (p. 4). Burnett’s familiarity with the landscape of late nineteenth-century German theology, as well as his command of the German language, serve as notable assets in his evaluation of the ‘inner doubts and vocational struggles’ Machen faced while studying in Germany (p. 137). Machen’s hope also foregrounds Machen’s voice via his letters, speeches and publications. While block quotes may turn away some readers, the book offers an intimate reading experience that anyone interested in J. Gresham Machen will assuredly appreciate.

Burnett begins his study with a thorough accounting of Machen’s family and their historical context. In chapter i he analyses Machen’s parents, grandparents and his childhood in Baltimore. In the subsequent chapter, Burnett explores Machen’s undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins University and his transition to Princeton Seminary. In 1901, Machen graduated valedictorian of his class at Johns Hopkins, but he seemed bored by Princeton Seminary’s less rigorous standards and, consequently, struggled to muster the motivation to simply pass his courses (p. 70). Chapters iii and iv cover Machen’s time studying the New Testament in Germany and wrestling with whether he should commit to a career in academia or pastoral ministry. Chapter v explores Machen’s decision to accept a position at Princeton Seminary. Burnett highlights in the following chapter a pessimistic pivot in Machen’s thinking concerning the future of American universities and the reforms at Princeton University in particular. Simultaneously, as chapter vii shows, Machen began to appreciate and identify with Princeton Seminary’s more conservative posture.

Chapter viii covers Machen’s decision to pursue ordination, as well as his time writing Sunday school curricula for the Presbyterian Church USA. The next chapter primarily traces the growing divide between Princeton University and Princeton Seminary, which deepened when Princeton Seminary invited the controversial revivalist minister Billy Sunday to preach on campus and, in response, Princeton University invited the more respectable and highly educated liberal minister Albert P. Fitch. Chapter x follows Machen’s early efforts to combat the theological liberalism of Princeton University professor Lucius Miller. The same chapter also foregrounds Machen’s decision to volunteer with the YMCA near the frontlines in France during the First World War, despite his opposition to America’s involvement. Chapter xi details Machen’s return to the home front after the war and his place in the developing internal controversies at Princeton Seminary. Chapter xi also explores Machen’s book The origins of Paul’s religion (1921), in which he attempted to produce first-rate scholarship that also took supernatural claims seriously. Lastly, chapter xii is less a conclusion and more an effort to connect certain loose threads and provide a final postlude to Machen’s life after 1921.

Machen’s hope is a unique biography because it is largely thesis-driven. In certain respects, it is more monograph than biography. Burnett contends that Machen was a modernist for most of his life; furthermore, he argues that Machen remained a modernist throughout the 1920s and 1930s in the sense that he continued to trust in ‘the tools of modern criticism’ (p. 554). While other scholars have admitted that Machen was wooed by aspects of modernism when he studied in Germany, Burnett does not see this as a phase but as Machen’s disposition for most of his life. Burnett relies on Shailer Mathews’s rather broad 1924 definition, which essentially categorises any Protestant opposed to anti-intellectualism and overt individualism as a modernist (p. 3). While Burnett relies upon this definition, he also argues that modernism is characterised by an unflinching optimism in the face of change and new information. Burnett claims that Machen was not simply modern, but a modernist because he was hopeful about key aspects of modernity.

The concept of ‘Machen’s hope’ serves as a framing device, a way for Burnett to show that Machen placed his hope in ‘the tools of the modern age’ (p. 4). This device serves as a helpful throughline throughout the book, but it occasionally obfuscates more than it clarifies. For instance, Burnett’s most consistent example of Machen’s hope is his optimism about the future of American academia, which Machen began to question after the theologically-liberal professor Lucius Miller was hired to teach Bible courses at Princeton University in 1906 (pp. 225–6). However, it is often unclear how Machen’s steadily declining hope in modern research universities is related to his ‘crisis of faith’. Burnett successfully shows that Machen was a modernist, or at least modern, in a nontheological sense. It is less clear, however, that Machen not only flirted with modernist theology, but was a theological modernist. The validity of this claim largely depends on if one agrees with Burnett’s characterisation of modernism. Too often, Burnett implies that Machen’s hope in the progresses of the modern world reflect a hope in theological modernism. Burnett could have better explained what aspects of modernity Machen placed his hope in other than American universities, and he could have more explicitly shown how this declining hope related to his ‘crisis of faith’. While Burnett sees them as logically correlated, Machen’s waning hope in American universities does not appear as clearly connected to his ‘inner doubts and vocational struggles’ as the book’s evidence implies.

None the less, Burnett offers a work of immense value not only to those interested in the life of J. Gresham Machen. Machen’s hope deftly covers the rise of the modern research university and the emergence of religious studies departments. Furthermore, Burnett explores Machen’s life within this developing cultural context, revealing the numerous struggles that American Christians, scholars, pastors and seminarians faced throughout the Progressive Era (p. 4). Machen’s hope highlights the struggles of one man who was certainly modern, but struggled to discern which aspects of modernism he could trust.

Machen’s hope also offers a fascinating insight into the Machen family’s complex relationship with their Southern Presbyterian heritage. Some have identified Machen’s Southern heritage as central to his ethos and character, essentially arguing that he and his family were temperamentally conservative. Burnett, however, contends that even though Machen idealised Southern culture and sympathised with the Lost Cause, he and his family were largely critical of the Southern Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in the United States) (p. 27). As Gaines Foster convincingly shows in his classic Ghosts of the Confederacy (1988), the Lost Cause embraced the New South without throwing out the honoured memory of the Old South. The Machens were a cosmopolitan Southern family. Much like Woodrow Wilson, the Machen family’s Southern identity and their sympathies for the Lost Cause did not make them prone to conservativism or resistant to change. The Machens fashioned themselves as supporters of science and progress, and they grew increasingly dismayed by the Southern Presbyterian Church’s intellectual seclusion and withdrawal from wider scholarly currents (p. 37). This was particularly evident when the Machen family expressed their full support for the Presbyterian minister and Columbia Theological Seminary professor James Woodrow (Woodrow Wilson’s uncle) when he was charged with heresy for his unwillingness to affirm that the world was created in six literal days. Machen’s parents, Arthur and Minnie, even offered their home in Baltimore as a headquarters for Woodrow’s supporters when the PCUS held their 1881 General Assembly in Baltimore (pp. 37–8).

As one final criticism, this reviewer was surprised by the author’s failure to include anything about Machen’s relationship with Mildred Stearns. Machen’s bachelorhood is one of the oft-overlooked aspects of his life, but his only notable romantic relationship was with a Unitarian woman named Mildred Stearns. Although the relationship was short lived, the romance occurred in 1920, and Machen corresponded with Stearns throughout his life. Their relationship and their correspondence fall within the purview of Burnett’s study and this would presumably reveal more about the continuity or discontinuity of Machen’s religious beliefs at a crucial moment in his life.

Even with its shortcomings, Machen’s hope is a thoroughly researched and nuanced piece of scholarship. Richard Burnett expertly positions J. Gresham Machen within his historical context, and he situates his ideas within the broader currents of both American and German scholarship. For anyone interested in J. Gresham Machen, the relationship between Princeton University and Princeton Seminary, or the rise of the modern research university, it is a fascinating and worthwhile read.