Clarence E. Macartney

Clarence Edward Noble McCartney (September 18, 1879 – February 19, 1957) was a prominent conservative Presbyterian pastor and author.

With J. Gresham Machen, he was one of the main leaders of the conservatives during the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

[1] His father, John L. McCartney was the pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America in Northwood and professor of Natural Science at Geneva College.

In 1901, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to pursue graduate work at Harvard, but grew frustrated and spent a year travelling in England, Scotland, and France.

It was about this time that Macartney's religious and vocational drift ended; he rejected the liberal values of Wisconsin–Madison and Yale; and threw himself behind the doctrines of Old School Presbyterianism taught at Princeton.

B. Warfield, Francis Patton, Robert Dick Wilson, and, his personal favorite, church historian Frederick Loetscher.

In 1914, he accepted a call from Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, a second congregation located in a deteriorating neighborhood.

In 1926, when the Special Commission appointed to deal with New York Presbytery's ordination of two men who denied the virgin birth recommended a tolerance in the spirit of the Auburn Affirmation, Macartney was the leading voice calling for stricter adherence to the Five Fundamentals.

He also held a Wednesday evening service, the sermons from which formed the basis of two books he later published: Things Most Surely Believed (1930) and What Jesus Really Taught (1958).

He opposed the spread of neo-orthodoxy at Princeton Theological Seminary, questioning, for instance, the decision to hire Emil Brunner.