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A. C. Dixon
1854 - 1925
"All conclusions drawn by faith are comforting. Reason is a
servant, not a master. It is the most abject slave in the world. It does
the bidding of ignorance, of sin, of virtue, of vice, of knowledge, of
faith or of unbelief. Every fact to the eye of faith may be comforting
because 'all things work together for good to them that love God.'"
Born on a plantation near Shelby,
North Carolina, on July 6,
1854, Amzi Clarence Dixon was a microcosm of an
era of Fundamentalism. His father, a Baptist preacher, was a godly man,
so young Clarence consistently received the highest caliber of Christian
example and training.
Destined
to become a great Bible expositor and elegant pulpiteer,
A. C. Dixon knew early in life that he must preach the Gospel. After
graduating from Wake Forest College,
Dixon served two country churches in North Carolina.
Leaving both congregations in a state of revival, he then went to study
under John A. Broadus at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Dixon is most often remembered
for his big-city churches in the North, though he always considered
himself a southerner. He enjoyed powerful and fruitful pastorates at many
places, but particularly at the well-known Chicago's
Moody Church
and London's
Metropolitan Tabernacle.
During
his 10-year ministry at Hanson Place Baptist
Church in Brooklyn (1890-1900) Dixon often rented
the Brooklyn Opera House for Sunday afternoon evangelistic services.
In
1901, he became pastor of Ruggles
Street Baptist
Church, Roxbury,
Massachusetts, a
Boston
suburb. Here Dixon taught at the Gordon
Bible and Missionary
Training School and
wrote his famous Evangelism Old and New, an attack on the Social Gospel
movement.
In
1906 he accepted the pulpit of the Chicago
Avenue Church
(Moody Memorial
Church), and he spent the war
years ministering at Spurgeon's Tabernacle in London.
During
these years he was conspicuous at Fundamentalist gatherings and spoke at
great Bible conferences.
A.
C. Dixon suffered a heart attack and died on June 14, 1925, just one
month before the Scopes Trial. Dixon,
like many other Fundamentalists, fought the good fight almost to the
midnight hour of his life.
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