HENRY, Carl F(erdinand) H(oward) 1913-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 22, 1913, in New York, NY; died December 7, 2003, in Watertown, WI. Theologian, minister, educator, and author. A conservative Baptist theologian, Henry was founding editor of Christianity Today and was widely regarded as the intellectual leader of what became known as the Neo-Evangelicalism movement. Beginning his career as a journalist, he worked for a newspaper on Long Island when a colleague helped convert him to Christianity. Henry then attended Wheaton College, earning a B.A. in 1938 and an M.A. in philosophy in 1940 while earning income as a writing and typing teacher. He then enrolled at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he received a B.D. in 1941 and a Th.D. in 1942. Postdoctoral study at Loyola University and Indiana University was followed by a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1949 and more study at the University of Edinburgh and at Cambridge. Henry was ordained a minister in the Baptist church in 1941, a year after he had begun teaching at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago. He served as professor and chair of the department of religion there from 1942 until 1947, when he was enlisted by the newly founded Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, to be a professor of theology and Christian philosophy. Henry taught there for the next ten years before accepting the position of editor at Christianity Today, a conservative counterpart to the more liberal Christian Century. As a minister, teacher, and writer, Henry became a leading evangelical voice after World War II and is often credited with reviving the evangelical movement in the United States. His many books concerning Christian philosophy and theology include Giving a Reason for Our Hope (1949), Christian Personal Ethics (1957), Frontiers in Modern Theology (1966), Evangelicals in Search of Identity (1976), Confessions of a Theologian: An Autobiography (1986), and Gods of This Age or God of the Ages? (1992). A dispute over editorial control of Christianity Today led Henry to leave his job there in 1974, and he spent the next thirteen years as a lecturer for World Vision in Monrovia, California, continuing to lecture through the 1990s for such organizations as Prison Fellowship Ministries.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Religious Leaders of America, 2nd edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, December 11, 2003, section 3, p. 14.

Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2003, p. B13.

New York Times, December 10, 2003, p. B13.

Washington Post, December 11, 2003, p. B6.