America’s First Baptist President

For First Things, Timothy George writes about the first Baptist president in U.S. history, President Warren G. Harding. Harding biographer Francis Russell writes, “After [Harding’s] first college encounter with the doctrine of evolution, he imagined himself a free thinker, even an atheist, although he would soon relapse into a mild Baptist conformity untouched by his mother’s zeal.” Towards the end of his life, Harding addressed the Third Congress of the Baptist World Alliance meeting in Sweden: “I believe with all my heart that nothing is more needed in the world today than the practical application of the spirit of Christ.”

Read at First Things

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