Who Was A. C. Dixon? Baptist Preacher and Editor of The Fundamentals
A. C. Dixon was an American Baptist preacher who lived from 1854 to 1925. His full name was Amzi Clarence Dixon. He pastored some of the best-known pulpits of his day: churches in Baltimore, Brooklyn and Boston, the Moody Church in Chicago, and the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, where Charles Spurgeon had preached. He is best remembered as the first editor of The Fundamentals, the set of booklets that gave the fundamentalist movement its name. But first and last he was a gospel preacher who wanted people converted.
Here's a closer look at his life, what he preached, and which of his books to start with.
A preacher's son from North Carolina
Dixon was born on July 6, 1854, in Shelby, North Carolina. His father was a Baptist preacher who served country churches in the Carolinas. At twelve, the boy was baptized during a revival his father led. He went to Wake Forest College, graduated in 1874, and later spent time at the Southern Baptist seminary, then in Greenville, South Carolina.
He felt the call to preach while still in college. He began in small rural churches in eastern North Carolina, was ordained in 1875, and then served as pastor at Chapel Hill and Asheville. In 1880 he married Susan Mary Faison. They had five children.
Baltimore, Brooklyn and Boston
In 1882 Dixon was offered the presidency of Wake Forest College. He turned it down and went instead to Immanuel Baptist Church in Baltimore. Eight years later he moved to Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, where he stayed from 1890 to 1901. In 1893 he spent a month preaching with D. L. Moody to the crowds at the Chicago World's Fair.
His Brooklyn sermons show a man who watched his city closely. In Lights and Shadows of American Life he preached on homes, workers, money, politics, amusements and the Sabbath, and he saw the city as a place where the gospel was needed most:
Every city is a great heart, throbbing with life and sending out good blood or bad through its thousand arteries of activity.
Lights and Shadows of American Life, Our Cities
From 1901 to 1906 he was pastor of Ruggles Street Baptist Church in Boston.
The Moody Church and The Fundamentals
In 1906 Dixon became pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago, the congregation D. L. Moody had founded. That same year he published The Young Convert's Problems and Their Solution, a handbook for new Christians. It shows his gift for plain counsel. On assurance of salvation, for example, he wrote from his own experience:
I think I have eternal life, not because I feel so and so, but because God says so.
The Young Convert's Problems and Their Solution, The Bible
In 1909 two California businessmen, Lyman and Milton Stewart, set out to send a series of booklets defending the main truths of Christianity to pastors, missionaries and students across the English-speaking world. Dixon was the first editor. The series, The Fundamentals, appeared from 1910 to 1915, with essays by writers such as James Orr, B. B. Warfield, R. A. Torrey and Handley Moule. For more on the series, see what are The Fundamentals.
Spurgeon's pulpit in London
In 1911 Dixon crossed the Atlantic to become pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, Spurgeon's old church. He served there through the hard years of the First World War, until 1919. Then he traveled widely, preaching at Bible conferences and evangelistic meetings.
In 1922, while he was attending a missionary conference in China, his wife Susan died after a short illness. Two years later he married Helen Cadbury Alexander, the widow of the gospel singer Charles M. Alexander. She later wrote his biography.
His last pastorate was at University Baptist Church in Baltimore. He died there on June 14, 1925, at seventy.
What he preached
Dixon's sermons are short, direct and full of illustration. He preached the new birth, the cross and the Holy Spirit's power, and he pressed for a decision. His collection Milk and Meat opens with the new birth and a sentence that sums up much of his preaching:
A man may be all right with his fellows, and all wrong with God.
Milk and Meat, The New Birth
He wouldn't let the cross be pushed aside for a Christ who was only a teacher or an example:
Calvary is the alphabet of Christianity. We must start at the cross, if we would reach the crown.
Milk and Meat, The Way and Work of Life
He was a strong believer in the Spirit's power for service, and he liked pictures from the new world of electricity. In The Young Convert's Problems he described the Holy Spirit as "the dynamo" and faith and consecration as the wires. In another sermon he put the two sides of the Christian life side by side:
We are saved by faith in Christ; we are made powerful by faith in the Spirit.
Milk and Meat, Chariots and Mantles
Dixon was also a fighter. He opposed the theory of evolution, the new critical views of the Bible, and teachings he believed denied sin and the atonement. The True and the False calls witnesses for the truth of Christianity and then gives a long Protestant critique of the Roman Catholic Church. Present Day Life and Religion tests doctrines and daily habits by what is morally right, from the justice of the atonement to business, the home and amusements. He was blunt, but he never let the fight crowd out love:
While we hate sin we should love sinners, and nothing in the church of Christ can take the place of love.
Lights and Shadows of American Life, Our Churches
Why he's still read
Dixon stood at the meeting point of the great revival preaching of Moody's era and the battles over the Bible that followed. His sermons show both: warm appeals to come to Christ, and sharp defense of the faith. Readers today still find him clear, quotable and practical, especially on the new birth, assurance, prayer and the use of money.
Where to start
TheWay Library has five of his books, all free to read. If you're new to him, start with The Young Convert's Problems and Their Solution, a short handbook on the Holy Spirit, the church, the Bible, prayer, temptation, money and amusements. Then read Milk and Meat, twenty-four sermons that show him at his best as a gospel preacher. For his thinking on Christian conduct, try Present Day Life and Religion.
Our guide to A. C. Dixon's books describes all five, and our collection of A. C. Dixon quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find all his books on the A. C. Dixon author page.