Blackwell Reference Online

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John Baillie, theologian and Church of Scotland minister, was born on March 26, 1886 in the Free Church manse at Gairloch, Scotland, the eldest of the three sons of John Baillie, Free Church of Scotland minister, and his wife, Annie Macpherson. John and his brother Donald were among the most distinguished Scottish theologians of the modern era. Although Baillie later recalled “a rigorously Calvinistic upbringing,” mainly by his mother, who was soon widowed, there were also liberal strands in Free Church culture and a huge respect for learning, which drove the brothers through brilliant academic careers at Inverness Royal Academy and at the University of Edinburgh, both graduating with firsts in philosophy and distinction in divinity. John Baillie spent the summer terms of 1909 and 1911 at the universities of Jena and Marburg, respectively. For a short time assistants in the philosophy department, the brothers spent time in the YMCA in France during World War I.In April 1919 Baillie married Florence Jewel Fowler and moved to Auburn Theological Seminary in New York State; he was ordained in the Presbyterian church there in 1920. Their only child, Ian Fowler Baillie, was born in 1921. The Roots of Religion in the Human Soul appeared in 1926 and The Interpretation of Religion in 1929. These books reflected wide cultural and theological experience from the manse in Gairloch to American ... log in or subscribe to read full text