Pleading for a Reformation Vision: The Life and Selected Writings of William Childs Robinson

A minister of the Presbyterian Church in the United States for more than sixty years, William Childs Robinson's career spanned the great events of twentieth-century history from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. These were difficult years for America and for Protestant Christianity in America. In this book, David Calhoun tells of how Robinson tirelessly laboured to arrest the Southern Presbyterian Church's slide toward a liberal theological position and preserve the old Calvinism that had marked the church from its beginning. In seminary classrooms, in pulpits across the South and beyond, and in the courts of the church, Robinson's voice was heard "pleading for a Reformation vision" based on faithfulness to Scripture and supported by the testimony of Reformers, English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters.

There then follows a selection of twenty-three articles from Robinson's pen which show something of the breadth and depth of Robinson's vision. In them one sees a man who exercised an all-round ministry as evangelist, pastor, church historian, and theologian, equally at ease writing on such diverse subjects as "The Saviour of Sinners," "Under His Wings," "The Theological Emphases of the Old Columbia Seminary," and "The Trinity: God in Action." Though unsuccessful in halting the church's decline into theological liberalism, Robinson's long years of ministry influenced successive generations of students and ministers, many of whom preserve his legacy by pleading for the same "Reformation vision."

About the Author

David B. Calhoun is Emeritus Professor of Church History at Covenant Theological Seminary, St Louis, Missouri. He has taught at Covenant College and Columbia Bible College (now Columbia International University) and served as principal of Jamaica Bible College. Prior to his appointment to Covenant Seminary in 1978, he was the overseas director of Ministries in Action.

A graduate of Columbia Bible College and Covenant Theological Seminary, Professor Calhoun holds master of theology degrees from Covenant Seminary (Old Testament) and Princeton Theological Seminary (New Testament). He earned the doctor of philosophy degree from Princeton in the field of church history. He is married to the former Anne Fleece of Columbia, S.C. and they have two grown-up children.

A Presbyterian minister, he has preached widely in many churches and has conducted Bible and missions conferences. He is the author of a two-volume history of Princeton Seminary – Princeton Seminary, Faith & Learning 1812-1868, and The Majestic Testimony 1869-1929 – and ‘Our Southern Zion’: Old Columbia Seminary (1828-1927), all published by the Trust.